Perks of being an influencer.

Ayana is an influencer. She is not yet getting payments from her gigs yet but she is getting tons of products from different companies connected with the group she is a part of. Ayana is being egged by her friends to treat them to an out-of-town trip, preferably to the beach. Three days and two nights beginning on Friday is perfect for them since all five of them have nine to five jobs to go back to by Monday. Ayana acquiesced to the suggestion.

She got her van checked to make sure it is in good condition before they drive it out of the city. Good thing she was able to shop used winter tires so she has spare tires she can bring with them in case they would need a replacement.

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Since she is an influencer, she was able to use it in order to save on the following: accommodation, meals, water activities, and swimwear.

The beach resort Ayana was able to book for her and her friends has villas good for large groups. She talked to the manager of the resort and was able to convince them that in exchange for accommodations, she will promote their resort in her social media accounts. She also guaranteed them that they will take beautiful photos in order to post to all their social media accounts to attract other travelers to book their stay with them.

A local online food seller wanted to be featured digitally in order to gain more customers. Ayana was able to talk to the seller and in exchange for providing them meals for three days, she and her friends will promote her online shop in all their social media accounts.

The same thing happened in getting new swimwear and booking water activities. In exchange for digital promotion, they will be given free swimwear and will be booked water activities near the resort.

These days, there are so many perks of being a digital influencer. I have a cousin and two friends who are all influencers and would post products they have tried almost daily in order to encourage others to try it as well. No, they don’t do video blogging. They just do social media posts, mostly, in Facebook and Instagram. Those are the platforms I see them the most.

I remember when I was very active in attending blogging events. I was given sample products in exchange for a simple, short review in my blog. I said yes to some, no to most. The rule that I follow is that I will review the products that I actually used that’s why I said no to most of the samples.

Being an influencer, though… makes me think of being one now.

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Thinking Out Loud…

I have this idea of creating either a new blog (new domain and all) or a sub-page of this blog of mine.

What do you think?

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Two ideas for specific topics I have in mind:

Architecture: Interior design included.

Entertainment: specifically, Netflix movie, TV series, documentary reviews. And something about books!

Maybe, I’ll go for new domains. Fresh start and all.

We’ll see.

Stay tuned!

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Blogging, A Lifestyle

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When I think of blogging, three significant contributions that it brought to my life come to mind: a creative outlet, a passive income, and a brand-sharing platform.

Blogging as a creative outlet.
If you are the type of person who love to write down their thoughts, blogging is one of the perfect platforms for you to do just that. You can share your thoughts not only to those who know you but also to others who will come across your blog. If you love to share your opinions and observations on just about anything, you can use a blog so you can be heard.

When I began blogging back in 2003, I just wanted an escape from all the stresses and frustrations of my life. When I feel burdened by life, I would write it down. Blog entry after blog entry, I would tell whoever would come to read my blog about what was happening in my life. I would also write essays about topics dear to my heart. Home and family, money matters, health and lifestyle. Blogging became a creative outlet for me and a way for me to escape reality even for a few minutes or hours in a day.

Blogging as a source of passive income.
A computer in good working condition, a decent internet connection, a few hours a day. You need it to be able to establish your presence online. Create a blog, write blog entries on topics you have knowledge of, and establish yourself as a source of information on those topics. Make sure that you are sharing information that are backed by facts. Then, find legitimate sites where you can earn through blogging.

I am an accountant by profession. I have a nine to five job that I love and pays well. But I have this idea in my mind that I cannot rely on a single source of income. I need to have another source, a passive income. And since I have been blogging when I am not doing accounting work, what better source of passive income but this side hustle I’ve been spending time on!

And blogging has been so good to me these past several years. I have earned a lot from doing something that I love and it is amazing, to say the least. I was able to send my youngest sibling to college with the money I earned from sharing my views about products and services on the web. And blogging continues to be the source of passive income for me to date.

Blogging as a brand-sharing platform.
This is in connection to blogging as a source of passive income. With blogging, you can share to the world wide web all the brands you patronize. You can review products and share it in your blog. That is one of the ways that I earn from blogging. Over the years, I have become an influencer through all the products and services that I share with my audience. You need to be authentic in the reviews you post for you to become an influencer. Your content has to be legitimate.

I can proudly say that my audience know the quality of my blog posts. They know what kind of blogger I am and how the quality of content, the authenticity of my reviews, have remained the same throughout the years.

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How to Make Money from Blogging

For many people, working from home and being their own boss is the dream. But many people also think of this as an impossible idea that could never become reality. But more and more people are learning about “passive income”, which seems too good to be true and only accessible to a few very lucky people.

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Making money through blogging takes a lot of hard work, but it can be done! Anyone can do it as long as they are determined. And if you can gain a decent sized readership on your blog, it is entirely possible to start monetizing it and start gaining surprisingly high amounts of passive income.

This straightforward guide will give you practical advice on how to make money from blogging so you too can work from home, be your own boss, and spend more time doing what you love. After reading this informative guide, you will see that all it takes to become a passive income pro is hard work, determination, and a little bit of creativity.

How to Get Started in Blogging

Here are a few ways you could start blogging and growing your network:

Make Your Site
The first step to getting into the blogging game is to create your own website. There are plenty of platforms to use, such as WordPress, Blogger, Wix, Squarespace, and more. It all comes down to your personal goals and which platform can best help you reach them. WordPress has high customization abilities and makes monetization easy so this would be one of the best choices for bloggers seeking possible income.

Pick a Niche
If you want to make a blog that brings in enough traffic for monetization, that blog will need to be specific enough to draw an audience without being so specific as to alienate large groups of people. You will not gain readers, especially loyal readers, if your blog is about anything and everything.

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Discussion interrupted.

One of the reasons why I secured an SSL certificate is to make sure that this blog will remain clean and secure for all its visitors. If you’ve read my post on being back to blogging after a few days of being offline, you’d know that this site was hacked and tagged as dangerous by Google. Which is a bad thing to happen to a site.

I managed to make it clean and I intend to make this site stay clean!

I closed the comment section of this blog. The reason? Antispam Bee is notifying me left and right about CSS hacks the plugin has been blocking ever since I put back this blog up. Instead of giving the hackers and bad bots any reason to infiltrate my blog again, I decided to close the comment section of this blog for the meantime. I don’t want to find myself in the same position as when my blog was tagged as carrying malicious apps.

If you want to reach me, you may do so via email at sashashing @ gmail.com

xoxo

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Back to regular programming.

back to blogging

Compromised. Hacked. Malware carrier. Suspicious site. Dangerous. Threat.

Those are all the words thrown at my blog by various sites due to a malware that entered my blog through the backdoor. According to one of the experts I talked to, there are various ways that a hacker can compromise a site. I am not much of a tech person so I didn’t list everything down anymore but took note of one important thing: regularly change passwords! I’ve been so complacent, not bothering to check my blog as regularly as I used to, and trusting that as long as my chosen password is strong, hard to guess, then everything’s okay. I was wrong.

My site got a malware virus from an attack I didn’t see coming. I was joining blog hops here and there and I am not sure if I got it from that. A few days ago, while joining a blog hop, a member of that group told me that her browser was issuing a warning that my site was compromised and that it posed a threat to her computer security. I checked and there was nothing so I ignored it. Then, another member told me the same thing. I ignored it again because when I checked, everything was normal. The following day, that’s when I began seeing something disturbing from my blog. I checked and that’s when the red warning appeared…

My site was tagged as a malware carrier!

I am not ashamed to tell you that I panicked. Why wouldn’t I? This site is my baby. It’s 10 years old already, turning 11 May of this year. Sasha-says.com is also a source of income for me so losing this site is a big no-no.

So, here’s what I did.

  • I scanned my site for malware. I used Sucuri SiteCheck and Comodo cWatch. Both tools are free. I will write separate entries for both malware removal sites and will tell you what I think about each.
  • I deactivated my site. When I found out that my site actually had malware in it, I deactivated my site by taking down all the posts and erasing everything that Sucuri said had malware or virus in it. I deleted the WordPress installation after saving some important details like the content of the sidebar and the pages. Then I deleted everything.
  • I moved to a new webhost. This is optional especially if you know how to really clean out your cpanel but since I am in such a hurry to bring back my site to its old glory, I bought a new webhosting account. I will also write a separate entry for it. I added this domain there and installed WordPress anew.
  • I submitted my site to Google Search Console Team and asked for a review. It will take a maximum of 72 hours for the review to be completed but mine took less than 24 hours only and I got an email from Google Search Console Team that my site is now clean and no longer poses a threat to its visitors.
  • SS-Google

  • I purchased an SSL Certificate from Comodo. I want to assure this site’s visitors that my site is 100% clean and secure. Again, this is optional but a good blogger-friend of mine advised me that if I want to maintain a good site, I must invest in it.
  • I installed a good anti-spam plugin. I used to have Akismet installed but since it now asks for payment for the use of their plugin, I opted to find an alternative. I found Antispam Bee! I read the reviews and it is the plugin I need. So far, so good. I installed and activated it before I opened this blog again. So far, it has blocked 6 comments meant to hack my css.

I tested this site in different browsers: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Samsung Internet Browser (through my best friend), and ASUS Internet Browser.

No more warning from Google!

Yey!

My blog is now back to regular programming.

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Free WordPress Themes

Have you noticed that there are less and less amazing WordPress themes that are free these days?

I wanted to change the theme of another blog that I maintain. I searched some sites I used to get themes from but I found that they are being sold now. I do understand that theme developers need to earn from their work but I miss the good old days when there were so many free themes to choose from. These days, one site has one free theme to offer, usually in exchange for a subscription to their blog. The rest of the themes are being sold or contain ads.

Another thing I noticed, WordPress themes have become too professional-looking. Most are created ala-magazine type where the front page has a slider and posts are displayed like small articles in magazines. Blogging has become too cold and the warmth provided by old free WordPress themes is no longer there.

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