Justin Germino Ramblings

My son loves strategy games and at six years old I thought introducing him to one of my favorite board games from my own childhood would be a good idea.  With that I purchased the Risk board game (classic edition) which comes with wood carved units and an old style map.  I was hoping to find the board game version with the Roman numeral units that I had as a kid, but couldn’t find that particular style at Target, Walmart, Kmart or GameDaze so I settled on the recreation of the 1950’s style Risk game.

My wife joined my son and I as we started dividing territories and placing units over the map.  It was my wife’s first time playing and in almost no time at all she captured all of South America, my son meanwhile was spreading his armies rapidly and at first had more territories than either of us.  Pretty soon, I managed to acquire Australia but by this time my wife had swooped in and taken Africa.  My wife continued to dominate until she wiped out my armies in Europe and my wife was gaining 18-21 army units per turn to my son’s four and my five.

Needless to say that my wife’s first time playing the game she completely dominated and wiped out both my son and I as we frantically attempted to hold back her blue armies.

It was fun, though it takes quite a bit of time to play (nearly 2 hours for one game) and my three year old was just about bored to tears watching us play.

Pretty soon, I will be introducing my son to Stratego, a game where my wife stopped playing with me a long time ago.

-Justin Germino

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Victorinox Swiss Army. All opinions are 100% mine.

It is true that watches are becoming less common on one’s wrist as more people are starting to rely on their cell phones or PDA’s to tell time than to simply look at a watch that you are wearing on your arm.

I myself don’t wear a watch all the time, but I always wear a watch if I am going out to a formal or semi formal event. A watch isn’t just a way to tell time it is also a piece of fashion or can be jewelry. I have a few different watches including a gold one which I wear to really formal events. I also have a watch that is leather with multiple replaceable leather bands so I can switch them out for black, brown or a kind of cream color to match whatever outfit I am wearing.

I know I remember a watch that I bought for my wife many years ago that had crystals at each hour mark, and she still wears this watch nearly 10 years later on special occasions.

You can find and wear any number of watches like a Victorinox Swiss Army watch that looks good on your wrist and is fully functional and stylish. I thought the Victorinox Swiss Army Chrono Classic Guilloche was a sleek looking watch and could be for just about any occasion.

Also to let my readers know, Victorinox Swiss Army is sponsoring a “Share the Adventure” contest where you could win a $25,000 grand prize. All you need to do is visit the Victorinox Facebook fan page for details on how to get entered to win the grand prize and there are several other prizes as part of the contest.

So how many of my readers still wear a watch and for what occasions? Do you have a special watch that means something to you?

-Justin Germino

I was browsing for Themes last week and found one called the Talian AdSense Targeted + SEO theme by Google AdSense Templates. This was an SEO optimized WordPress template that auto constructed the META description and META keywords html code in all posts and pages without the need for a plug-in. This theme also had a large number of built in AdSense blocks and all you had to do was input your own AdSense ID.

Now I couldn’t use this code vanilla and had to modify the files around a bit, the first thing I did was remove some of the side bar items that were of no use to me. I then removed all of the build in AdSense code blocks for the theme and put manual ones in instead. This is because to do paid opps from SocialSpark you need to make sure there is no “AdSense” block in the sponsored post or they will reject your submission. I use the All in One Adsense and YPN plug-in for wordpress because it lets you customize your AdSense block inside a WordPress post but also allows you to disable the AdSense ads for specific posts.

The problem is that this displays on the homepage just fine, but most of the individual posts don’t display an AdSense block at all with the plug-in and this theme for some reason.  This is maddening and is frustrating me to heck, I can’t seem to resolve it and I am hoping the theme developer can either help me figure out how to get this plug-in to work with his theme, or add a custom field which can disable the AdSense block inside individual posts.

I also had to customize the single and index.php files to put in my custom social submit buttons and widgets which took some time to tweak the sizes and spacing to make it all fit the way I wanted it to.

Last but not least, comments weren’t displaying at all on my posts, and I disabled all 23 plug-ins I was using to no avail.  I wound up copying the comments.php from the default wordpress theme and all my comments started showing up again.  I suspect this has something to do with the way the new theme handled threaded comments (it had a read me about overwriting a default wordpress file for WordPress 2.8.5 but didn’t want to do this with WordPress 2.9.2).

Overall the theme loads pretty fast and I really like the look and feel compared to my old theme.

My last and only outstanding item at this time is getting the AdSense 300×250 block that you see on the homepage inside all posts except selectively disabling for some posts.  I am really hoping to get some help from the developer here.

How do my readers like my new blog theme, let me know what you think.

-Justin Germino

I found out that my CR Post2PingFM plug-in wasn’t working for my poetry blog and personal blog, where it would constantly append the URI /feed at the end of my posted URL that was shrunk with the plug-in.  It worked for DragonBlogger.com.  I hadn’t noticed this problem before and had been using the plug-in for at least five months, so I was distressed when one of my poetry players couldn’t read my Ping.FM url for my posts.  It makes me think that many of my posts over the past few weeks may have been broken in the URL shrink and not realized it.

I have switched plug-ins to using the Publish 2 Ping.FM plug-in now and am testing this plug-in to see if it works properly, one thing I like about this plug-in is it integrates with your Bit.Ly and your Ping.FM account so your links are Bit.Ly shrunk instead of using the default Ping.FM URL shrinking (this allows for click tracking and analytics).

I will do a follow up review on DragonBlogger.com later in the week and let everyone know if this plug-in works better.  One thing I don’t like is it seems to not “repost to Ping.FM” if you are “updating” a post, it may only do it for new posts.

Update:

In doing more research no plug-ins for wordpress can post to Ping.FM anymore and the cuplrit was with the feed setup in Ping.FM Superfeedr itself.. I had setup the superfeedr to using the justingermino.com/feed URL and this caused the /feed to prepend, but it appears to work when using the Google FeedBurner URL for the blog feed instead.

For now, the only way I have found to have my blog feeds posted to Ping.FM and all my social networks is to use the SuperFeedR feature inside Ping.FM itself. This limits to 1 feed per Ping.FM account but you can create multiple Ping.FM accounts linked to same social networks to work around this.

-Justin Germino

So my family and I decided to spread out a Lord of the Rings marathon over two weeks with my two kids ages 6 and 3 who hadn’t seen the film yet. We watched all 3 extended versions of the film (which I own).

My family generally watches a movie or part of a movie each night to unwind together before the kids go to bed, and we decided to partake in a LoTR movie watching. This spanned for almost two weeks with my kids being engaged the whole time.

I still stand that the LoTR Trilogy stands as one of the best trilogy of films of all time, and it has been over four years since I saw all three films back to back. My kids were hooked and my three year old goes around the house screaming “My Precious” now occasionally.

-Justin Germino

Happy Mothers Day to all you moms out there. Having and raising children is one of the toughest jobs on the planet and having at least one day to be recognized for it is great because most kids won’t truly appreciate you until they are adults. Little kids almost always take their parents for granted.

I would like to thank my wife for being such a great mother to our kids. She goes so above and beyond not only in just caring for them but for making sure they have the best education and she is always striving to help them grow up to be the best people they can be.

I am just in awe of her capacity for patience and love for our boys and the way her face lights up whenever they are around her and I can tell that our family is complete.

Enough gushing, Happy Mothers Day to all mom’s out there and to my wife.

-Justin Germino

For bloggers who write paid or sponsored content to do product reviews, promotion or generate buzz for advertisers and companies you may find yourself wondering the proper protocol when an advertiser approaches you and requests you to write a post for them.  I make a fair amount of money from online companies that broker the transaction between Advertiser and Blogger like SocialSpark, PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, ReviewMe just to name a few.  One thing I like about using these services is you know the advertisers have already funded the campaign, so you know you will write the sponsored opp and then you will receive payment in X # of days provided the opp was approved and met the criteria…etc.

However, when advertisers contact you directly to write a post (it is cheaper for them, because they don’t have to pay the overhead costs that the broker charges) you may wonder if you should have the same policy to do the work and then request payment after work is completed and the advertiser signs off or requests any changes to be made.  This is how I ran my model for nearly two years, I was taking an advertiser at their word and writing the blog post, once the company signed off I would send them a PayPal invoice or have them send funds directly to my PayPal account.

I ran into several problems later on though with this method, the first being that some companies told me after the fact that they only had AMEX corporate accounts and couldn’t pay PayPal  (PayPal doesn’t allow Amex corporate card payments).  This is good to disclose up front that you can only accept PayPal payments, something I didn’t do early on, the other is that I have written posts and run into issues where advertisers just didn’t pay no matter how many email reminders I sent out.  I have been 60 days without payment on a post or two, and the hassle to track and remind advertisers is inconvenient.  This doesn’t happen often, most advertisers are credible and legitimate, but it does happen.

So now, my policy has shifted to where when an advertiser wants to purchase a review or spot for my blog, I always require payment up front for the work.  I do make sure that sponsored content is top priority and get a sponsors post done within 24 hours, even if I have to stay up late at night to work on it.  I have made compromises for some specific advertisers that I have worked with before, or in certain circumstances, but this route is just better.  This is also one reason why I actually really like using SocialSpark, PayPerPost and other companies that broker the deals between advertisers and bloggers, they take the worry about collecting funds directly yourself.  You can check out my review on the top companies that pay you to blog from my own experience and perspective.

Share your own experience with sponsored content, have you ever had a hard time collecting when an advertiser hires you?

-Justin Germino

Here is a question for my readers and fellow bloggers. If you only had one your to spend today blogging, how would you spend it? What activities would you do and what would you prioritize?
This assumes that you have no posts queued or scheduled and you haven’t caught up on your email, comments or Twitter mentions yet.

Break up our hour and let me know how you prioritize an hour? Now that you have done that, follow your routine for each hour you spend blogging per day. This is the best way to maximize your time and efficiency blogging and ensures that you account for each minute so you don’t waste any time doing frivolous activity that is not a priority. It is far too easy to say you are going to sit down and write some blog posts, but get distracted by comments, reading other blogs and responding or socializing on Twitter. These distractions will lead to poor time management and reduce your efficiency, forcing you to spend more time “blogging” than you had intended and than you really need to.

If I had only one hour with no posts written, here is how I would spend it. (Note: This is assuming 1 blog, I run 3 so would just write 3 blog posts for my three).

• Spend 20 minutes writing a quality blog post of no less than 200-300 words.
• Spend 5 minutes finding best keywords to SEO optimize the blog post
• Spend 15 minutes responding to blog comments and comment back on other blogs after reading some articles or skimming.
• Spend 10 minutes catching up on social media messages and doing some promotion for my blog posts
• Spend 10 minutes reading other posts, news and writing down topics and idea’s for new blog posts (try to get 3-4 blog post titles/ideas)

That is my most efficient way to spend a single hour blogging, and here is a break down of what each activity buys you.

By writing a quality post instead of a shorter one, you are helping keep a user on your site longer (lower bounce rate) providing more valuable information than a simple message update or tiny verbiage that is nothing but a filler. By spending some extra time finding appropriate keywords, you are going to make sure that your blog post gets more traffic and better placement on Google search and other search engines. This will increase overall organic search traffic if you have a good niche topic and have some luck and good keyword choices selected.

By responding to your comments, you are engaging your readers. By visiting their blogs and commenting back you are returning the favor, and you may get other idea’s about future blog posts and learn some helpful information as well.

By engaging in some social media, you are garnering interest to your site and also keeping readers and users engaged. Show them you are a living person, have two way conversations and that you are not just another RSS or Twitter Feed sending out articles without any active engagement.

Lastly, collect idea’s and document them for your next blog posts, even if its just writing some titles and saving some drafts. Sometimes having good post titles can inspire you to think of posts to surround the title.

So how would you spend your blogging hour?

-Justin Germino

I have always enjoyed being in a support role in information technology and one of the things I enjoy best about the role is being able to help customers and users figure out and resolve problems. This carries into my personal life even when not working for my day job. An example of this is when somebody had some wordpress issues last Sunday and was in need of help and reached out to me over Twitter to see if I was available. I promptly assisted and even called someone on the phone whom I had only known and conversed with over Twitter previously and helped them figure out and resolve their WordPress configuration issue.

The person just happen to catch me at the right place and right time, I am not normally in front of my computer on a Sunday until night time, and I just happened to be checking emails and doing some quick twitter updates, but I was glad to be available and to assist. It turns out that my experience with working on WordPress over the past two years has made me knowledgeable enough that I can walk through issues fairly quickly and I was happy to have found and helped the person resolve the problem.

This support mentality is one that I have had for a long time, the being able to help and assist is one of my favorite activities. The fact that I can make a decent living at it at my day job only furthers my enjoyment of the role. I do wish that more people had an attitude to be as helpful as possible in their nature, it would be a much kinder and gentler place in the world.

-Justin Germino

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

Most people don’t have the luxury to go to college full time to earn a degree anymore and there are so many advantages to being able to take online courses and have the ability to earn your degree online that I could provide a list that would go on for quite a while.

The University of Southern California is offering an excellent online program so that you can earn your Master of Arts in Teaching and this is an accelerated program that can take as little as 12 months to complete. This program is ideal for aspiring teachers or teachers looking to advance their higher education and they can take the entire course online at USC.

USC is a school of education that is ranked #22 in the United States and #9 among all private universities by US News and World Report.

At USC they have a unique groundbreaking tuition reimbursement program and scholarships that you may qualify for to help you with the financing.

The University of Southern California has an innovative combination of highly interactive online learning with field-based experiences in your local area which includes technology video that introduces the interactivity of the program.

With the MAT@USC Program you could earn your Master of Arts in Teaching Online.

I encourage you to read more about the program information and see if working toward your Masters of Arts in Teaching is something that you want to add to your career path.

You can also visit the MAT@USC Student Blog, to read and hear insights about the program from actual students who are taking and have completed the program.


-Justin Germino