Justin Germino Ramblings

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hampton Hotels. All opinions are 100% mine.

So I was thinking about the Hampton Chain of Friends Sweepstakes contest which is going on right now and the grand prize is winning a whole Hampton hotel 100 rooms for 2 nights, plus you get $5,000 to help cover any taxes so you don’t have to deal with that additional worry that comes with winning a gargantuan prize sometimes.

I know that if I were to win this grand prize that I don’t have enough friends to fill up 100 rooms, so I would probably try to do something truly fantastic.  I would hold a mini blogging convention and invite as many bloggers that I know and I would coordinate maybe a few conferences, food and turn it into a very small, very personal networking experience for the blogging community.

I am sure I could probably find 100 local bloggers, social media folks willing to network and come together for such an event.  I would even invite companies to sponsor and possibly cater food.

The First place contest is winning a two night stay for yourself and three of your friends.  This one is simple and we would probably coordinate a California trip for a weekend if I were to win this prize package.

All you have to do to enter the Chain of Friends Sweepstakes is click on the sponsor link above or below, and enter your registration information.  Typical name, email, address kind of information.  That’s it and it takes no time at all or any cost to enter the contest.  You don’t have to buy anything or commit to anything (heck I didn’t even get a single piece of advertising email from Hampton in (yet) when I subscribed and said I didn’t want offers or promotions).

This contest is open to anyone, even if you have never stayed at a Hampton in previously. 

What would you do if you won 100 hotel rooms for 2 nights?  Do you have enough friends to hold a party that big, or would you coordinate some sort of event?

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Boost Mobile. All opinions are 100% mine.

Was checking out the deals offered by Boost Mobile and found they had some really good unlimited plan and monthly rates for a small variety of phones. 

One phone that looked pretty awesome was the Motorola i1 which is based on the Android OS and has all the features you come to expect in a Smart Phone.

With Boost Mobile you get unlimited talk, text, web and email for $50 per month which is a fraction of the cost for other mobile competitors which can charge over $90 per month for the same features.

Still other providers aren’t even offering unlimited data plans anymore, so purchasing an unlimited plan now may be a great way to save money so you don’t have to pay when you exceed your data bandwidth or the number of texts you send per month.

I even found that you can get a Blackberry Curve 8830 plan for $60 per month that also includes unlimited text, phone, data and web.  This is a really good price for a blackberry plan which can exceed over $120 easily for unlimited plans on other networks.

Boost Mobile offers something different called Re-Boost which is an allows you to create an account that can allows other methods to "fund" it.  This is a good option for teenagers or college students where parents can fund their accounts and add credit or partially pay bills for them if needed.

With Re-Boost you can pay online and add automatic payments from your credit card, or just register your card for future payments.  You can find an in-store locator to pay your Boost Mobile bill in person, or pay by phone as well.

Boost Mobile offers some nice phones and even nicer unlimited plans and if you are about to end your contract with your existing wireless provider or you don’t have a wireless cell phone provider yet, you should check out Boost Mobile and see if they have a plan and phone that fits what you are looking for.  Their prices are very competitive and worth considering to save some money every month, also note that there are no annual contracts with Boost Mobile.

I wrote my two year anniversary post on my Technology Blog yesterday and I found it hard to believe that I have now reached 24 months since I started blogging.  It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that I started to branch out online and start writing, and writing and writing.

In fact, I have written so much varied content that I can’t keep track of it except by visiting my own sitemap on my sites.  I wrote over 1100+articles for DragonBlogger.com, over 780+ original poems & haikus for Wanderer Thoughts Poetry and another 875+ posts for JustinGermino.com.  This doesn’t include the 200+ articles/poems/haiku’s for AssociatedContent and about 25 guest blogging articles on varied sites like FamousBloggers.net, BlazingMinds, and BloggerTalk.net and Evoire.

I enjoy writing and especially writing about what I learn and the things I know, I have always been an enthusiast for technology, Internet and all aspects of computers and it comes out naturally in the things that I write about.  Blogging is my expression and something I will continue to do until I grow weary of it and don’t enjoy doing it.  I don’t see that happening in the near future, and even if I stopped I would still maintain my blogs just to keep them in circulation and online presence in case I wanted to start again at a future date.

I envy the bloggers who have stuck it out 4, 5 or 6 years in the industry and still blog as hard today as they did when they first started.  Blogging can be exhausting and your commitment to this enterprise can be taxing if you let it.  Remember to take it one piece at a time and set clear goals so can be as efficient as possible.  It is too easy to lose time to social media or other online avenues and not dedicate that time to building your blog by writing quality content.

-Justin Germino

What do you sacrifice?

We all sacrifice something every day of our lives, whether it be time, money, or something tangible.  I find that my own sacrifices mostly involve time and sleep, I work far too much and sleep far to little as of late.

I sacrifice my sleep and my free time in the hopes that I can really start jumpstarting my blogging to reach the next level.  I have been plateaued for almost nine months now and haven’t seen enough growth in both traffic and monetary terms so I have to make more effort and spend more time in trying to expand my online influence.

I only sacrifice these things because I actually still enjoy blogging, the moment I cease to enjoy it I would stop and let my blogs idle until I felt like doing it again.  My wife always hated my competitive nature in games and this same nature to achieve perfection in anything I do is what drives me constantly.  Because blogging is something that you can get a return based on how much you put into it, I feel that the more that I put in the more that I will get out of it in the long run.

It is exhausting sometimes, because my blogs take a backseat to my day job (rightfully, they should).  So on weeks where I am busy at work I just let my blogs sit until the weekends and I can play catch up.

I kick myself for not starting blogging back in 2003/2004 like most bloggers who wish they started earlier.  I was always in the IT industry and worked for more than 11 years in the web server/Internet space and for some reason only stumbled onto blogging in the middle of 2008.  Ironic considering I always enjoyed writing and wanted to be a novelist when I was a kid.

The fact that over 30,000 unique people visit my combined 3 blogs per month amazes me, and to think that more than 1 million people have visited my sites in the two years they have been live is even more astounding.  Now if only I can figure out how to refine and focus my energies and improve efficiency and productivity without sacrificing more time.

Who else sacrifices something for their work, hobbies or passions?

-Justin Germino

Back in early July I had decided to try and step up my Amazon affiliate program to see if I could make earning from Amazon an added source of income for my blogs.  I primarily decided to test with my personal blog (this blog) experimenting with reviewing and talking about various Amazon.com products and listing a banner in the right hand bar.

Amazon Affiliate starts out by giving affiliates a 4% commission rate, which you would think is low compared to some individual affiliate programs that offer 20 – 50% on individual products, but this is actually high compared to some other online retailer commissions like NewEgg with a default 2% commission rate.

One thing I did like about Amazon.com affiliate is that you can increase your commission % based on the number of sales you make.  In less than 2 months of experimenting, I managed to make a total of 10 sales and boost my commission up to 6%.  Another 23 sales and it will go up to 6.5% (I don’t know how high it can go, I haven’t researched it).

One thing about using Amazon Affiliate is that there are so many products to choose from, plus you can just install best deal widgets and set them like banner ads and earn from affiliate commissions.

What makes Amazon.com Affiliate program interesting is that I haven’t sold a single affiliate product I specifically endorsed or promoted.  All of my commissions were from products I didn’t even know about or talk about.  Amazon.com sets a cookie on anyone who clicks the banner or link from your site, and if they order anything on Amazon.com while that cookie sits in their browser you get the commission from the sale. 

While $9.14 may not seem like much bragging, it is more than I earn from SponsoredTweets and MyLikes combined in a month lately and it is only from hosting a single Banner ad for Amazon.com on my sidebar and doing the occasional post with an Amazon link or ad at the bottom of it.

-Justin Germino

I don’t really claim to be a WordPress expert, at least certainly not in theme design.  I do know enough to install, setup, configure not only a WordPress blog and SQL manually if necessary but also to setup a theme and tweak it enough to make it look like something else or fit someone’s needs.

It is amazing the amount of requests I get to help others with WordPress installations lately, and I probably could make more money contracting myself out as a WordPress for hire guy than as a blogger if I were to use Odesk or eLance or some other self contracting site where you can bid on projects and hire yourself out.

My problem is time, most people who come to me need something fixed because its broken and can’t wait until my normal availability hours like Saturday/Sunday.  This prohibits me from doing WordPress support on the side for clients, though sometimes clients still hire me to help modify, fix or design a WordPress site for them.

All in all, I have personally installed, administrated and configured 15 WordPress installations on 15 separate Domain names so far in the past two years.  This includes 5 which were my own blogs, (but I retired 2 and am now down to 3).

I have done everything from recover a WordPress site from being hacked with malware code injected in every PHP file to switching a theme for a customer and designing a new header.  I have even helped a client move an entire blog site from one domain to another including backing up and transporting SQL Database, all Upload files, Plugins and switch themes.

I just learned WordPress by installing and doing, everything I have figured out as I go along and I enjoy helping others.  It is in my nature to help others who are having trouble, it comes from 11 years in the IT Customer support business. 

I don’t consider myself a WordPress expert, in order to be a WordPress expert you need to know your way around PHP coding and CSS a lot better than I do.  You need to be able to code for clients needs which I cannot do.  I am learning that I am however a pretty good WordPress support person, and can do more than I realized when it comes to supporting people with WordPress issues.

-Justin Germino

Just finished beating The Mobius Factor in Starcraft II Wings of Liberty where you have to destroy 3 secret facilities before the Queen of Blades (Kerrigan) can learn information from them about the Protoss Artifacts.

The mission is fast paced, intense and the animated cut scene after where you get to see Kerrigan abandoned and left to be attacked by the Zerg is as high quality as any CGI movie I have seen.

Meanwhile my six year old already beat Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty on easy mode.  I was playing the game on normal mode but realize I am not a very good player to be able to battle others online in multiplayer.  My record is 0 for 14, even my son won 2 games with my account so it makes my record look like I have 2 wins, but I didn’t win those matches.

The cool thing about the game is there are different units in the single player campaign than in the multiplayer campaign, and the style of play is slightly different as a result.  You get to have more fun building at your own pace and experimenting on the single player campaign that most people don’t accommodate in multiplayer.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is one of the best Real Time Strategy games I have ever played and well worth the money if you like the genre or are a Blizzard or Starcraft fan.  The single player campaign is worth every penny, you get your money’s worth by far.  This game has more life than any console game you could purchase and is a bit cheaper as well.

-Justin Germino

I was inspired by an article by Rey titled Ask Me Anything which was a very clever post that really got readers interactive by having them question their blogger to know more about him.

So I have decided to make this my "Ask Me Anything" post on JustinGermino.com and see what questions come up.  I have done several interviews on other sites, but haven’t done any in about a year so I don’t know what people would want to ask except for blogging related questions.

Go ahead and ask me anything

Doesn’t have to be about blogging, internet.

Ask me anything you want and I will answer honestly, get to know your blogger, the man behind the blog so to speak.  There are some rules to asking questions and certain questions may not be acceptable or appropriate for a public medium.

What do you want to know about me?

I will post some of the Questions and Answers here in the blog area as they come in and are processed.

-Justin Germino

Decided to showcase some great articles I have read in the past several weeks on other sites that are worthy of a mention.  I didn’t have time to write a separate blog post for each one, so including them in what I call a Hump Day Roundup.

These would be some of my favorite blogging related articles in the past two weeks on some other sites and I highly recommend them if you hadn’t had a chance to visit and read these articles.

7 Characteristics of Highly Successful Bloggers – written by Onibalusi Bamidele

The Case For and Against Popup Opt-in Forms – written by Kristi Hines

How to Install CommentLuv on Blogger – written by Ms. Ileane

The Downside of List Posts – written by Sebastian Schmitt

Crazy Stuff I’ve Done as a Blogger, and What I’ve Learned From It All – written by Larry Brooks

I now am using Thunderbird to subscribe to about 10-20 other blog feeds, but try to catch up and skim as I find time.  Between Ingboo Feeds and Thunderbird feeds I have to be careful not to spend too much time reading other articles and focus on creating content.  I am a reader and all too often an hour can pass at night and I read about 10 great blog posts instead of writing my own.

-Justin Germino

Today my son started his first day of second grade at Legacy Traditional Charter School and the school spent all summer building up a new campus that is very close the the house and quite amazing.  The school expanded to include now K-8 and has three separate buildings and the elementary kids are in their own building.

My son has done very well at this new Charter school and the curriculum is much more demanding than the public school he was in for the first two weeks of first grade.  My wife and I are very pleased with the quality of education he is getting from Legacy Traditional Charter Schools here in Casa Grande and it really is like getting a private school education without any cost except having to volunteer a minimum of 12 hours per school year.

My son faces new challenges and actually was put in the class with the teacher he was hoping for when 1st grade ended.  So I am hoping he is off to a good start this year and continues meeting is straight A’s in all subjects which he was able to finish off first grade with.

The school uses the following teaching principles / programs:

• Saxon Math
• Spalding Reading/Writing
• Harcourt Social Studies program
• McGraw-Hill Science Series for grades K-5

I for one think it is an excellent system and in this society a child needs to be challenged and kept thinking to keep up.  Too many schools have gone lax and Arizona in particular is known for some of the worst public schools in the nation so it is good to find a Charter school that meets the high standards that my wife and I both have.

-Justin Germino