2007 has almost come to an end, 2008 is waiting right in front of us. Would you let a year end, without doing any assessments on what you (and me) has achieved so far? Actually, I’ve been drafting this post since early December, but it was kept delayed, until the very end of year. Funny huh???

Are we celebrating the coming of 2008? Got a place to go on the eve of 2008? Got friends to celebrate it with? Wait, what are we celebrating, 2008? Let’s make the celebration more meaningful. Why don’t we look back at 2007, and prepare ourselves for a more blissful, meaningful, productive, joyful, year ahead. For this, we need to check on what we did wrong so as we can correct them, what we took for granted so as we’d be counting our blessings to make our life a happier one, what we did half-heartedly and find the “holes” so as we can find the true satisfaction in life, and to appreciate what we have so as not to regret its loss..

I’m glad Blogjer.com is 6 months old now (clap2), but I’ve been in so called internet ‘marketing’ for about a year. Yeah, it was a wonderful year, full of learning curves and challenges. But am I successful? No and yes. There are parts that I managed to work on successfully, parts that I failed and parts that I wasn’t able try out. Whatever the outcome is, I’m proud of what I have.

Talking about a new year, it wouldn’t’ be complete without talking about goals, everyone should have their own goals I believe, be it personal (such as looking for a bf, gf or spouse), career, financial and bla bla bla. You must have set what you wanted to achieve by the end of the year. But the goal must be realistic and achievable, otherwise it will be a great challenge to achieve it or it’d just be another ‘oh I miss my target, what a miserable year’.

Setting a high bar for your own goal is good, it’ll drive you better and push you harder to achieving it. But at the same time, you must remember that, whatever the outcome is from your effort, either fruitful or not, must be accepted willingly. Disappointment is a dangerous disease here, it could put a stop to your ‘half-baked’ journey. Don’t forget about consistency, it is another main thing that you must keep in mind and practice at all times.

So what are my achievements, my failures and things that I had left behind? OK, before that, this not ‘high end’ achievements or failures, it’s some sort of moderate things that you guys can find somewhere else, maybe better than mine. And the list is not that long too. I’m not that great person, and I also kind of a person that didn’t plan (do whatever I want to do) and jot down what I’ve done before, so the list is just the basics of what I can remember.

My humble good achievements
I love to state what I have achieved so far, (as always the best thing comes out first)..

1. I have hosted my first personal blog. This would be my personal blog after going online for around 7 months. Started last July, I managed to maintain this blog until now, even when I missed posting quite often before.

2. My wife has started blogging, a big achievement for me since she comes from an engineering background.

3. Started to earn from my websites. Received monthly payment from Google Adsense every month (even though I have WU error for the last 2 months), and got Kontera cheques as well.

4. I have 7 websites even though some of them were not properly managed.

5. I gained more exposure and knowledge about SEO, and to know how important it is to us. But I believe there are more to come.

6. Won a podcast gear. (but I’ve yet to receive it, gotta check with them again, almost forgot about it)

7. I have improved my English. Yeah, if you have seen my post earlier, the grammar and sentence s**ks. Do you think I’m a better person now?

8. I got friends online (even though I have met none of them physically).

9. I had taught 1 of my colleagues on how to buy domains and hosting and then setup her own blog FOC (It is in very early stage though.). It is time to give back what I’ve learned.

Failures that I don’t want to see again

1. I targeted to have at least 10 websites/blogs by this year, but unfortunately, few events had halted my plan. However, I’m going to revise this plan to concentrate on this blog and some earlier websites/blogs that can provide decent income for me.

2. None of my site got pagerank 5.

3. I wished to create my own wordpress template this year, but the plan was abandoned due to time constraint. I foresee distributing free wordpress template as one of the best ways to have lots of back links.

4. I failed to sell any Clickbank product. Dang it!!

5. I was unable to sustain my online earnings. My adsense and kontera earnings had decreased especially for the last few months

What I forgot to try, that I wasn’t able to try or that I have no time for it

1. I didn’t try using PPC, be it Google Adword or YPM or MS adCenter (YPN and adCenter is in Beta).

2. I didn’t try other blogging platforms such as drupal/moveable.

3. Joining any webmaster or blogger gatherings. I hope to attend AMBP’s gathering next year.

If you’re using Google Reader as your RSS reader, you should notice the ‘Top Recommendation’ features on Google Reader front page.

For the past few weeks, I’m purposely letting this recommendation without dismissing any blog suggested, to see if Google Reader can recommend other blogs when I’m not subscribing any of recommended blogs. I assume it should be able to display other blogs on top of the recommendation list interchangeably.

It seems however, Google Reader is not smart enough, the same recommendation stays there. I’m not against any of this recommendations though , even though 2 of the top 3 recommendations are related to politics and free thinking. I’m not an avid fan for this subjects, even though I do read them occasionally, but not from RSS reader. If Google Reader can keep switching their recommendation after certain page impressions, it should be a better service to folks like me.

How the recommendation list generation is working based on Google Reader’s Help Center:

Your recommendations list is automatically generated. It takes into account the feeds you’re already subscribed to, as well as information from
your Web History, including your location. Aggregated across many users, this information can indicate which feeds are popular among people with
similar interests. For instance, if a lot of people subscribe to feeds about both peanut butter and jelly, and you only subscribe to feeds about
peanut butter, Reader will recommend that you try some jelly. This process is completely automated and anonymous; your personal information will
be protected in accordance with our privacy policy.

Based on above statement, there are 3 things that I can conclude here:

1. Since I read more topics related to techs news, economy, how to make money online, blogging and etc, Google is indirectly asking me to read something else such as politics, thinking or automotive stuffs.
2. Since location is one of the considerations, that means many Malaysians are reading these topics
3. Other readers who’re reading about technology, blogging and money and etc also reading other topics as recommended.

Since then, I have subscribed to a couple of ‘thinking’ blogs in order to broaden my views and thoughts. So what kind of blog you are reading most?

Update 4-Jan-2007
Google recommends new blog to me finally ;p