Weekend Chit Chat, blog development and Good Reads

This week was eventful on the blog front, I finally moved over from earlier host HostGator to a new host, run by my good friend Andrea, from Nuts and Bolt media. The screen shot below this article is the speed comparison before and after the move. I am very happy to see my site running faster now.

Other eventful aspect for OCAAT was the ever changing Google algorithm which resulted in some loss of search traffic. You might not be able to see the reason of my worry. Loss of views/visitors causes severe headache for a website owner. It means loss of revenue and slowdown of future growth.

As people would find their way in to OCAAT through Google searches, there is a chance that many of them would like what I write and become my regular readers.

So far, I haven’t put ad-sense ads or affiliate ads. These ads generate revenue for the site owner when visitors click on them or buy the product/service by clicking on them. Regular readers rarely would click such ads. But, search engine visitors who are looking for something specific is more likely to click on those ads.

In some point in future I’d start displaying those ads here. I need to grow my articles’ ranking so that more and more people visit my blog. I am not sayign I don’t care about regular readers. I do care and write for them. Regular readers are a blog’s life line.

Ok, that’s it for the loss of readership rant. It’ll recover someday.

Let’s have a look in to the new host aspect of this blog. Andrea and I exchanged some 40 emails between us, at various times of the day for 7-8 days to make it happen. She was a part-time personal finance blogger before becoming full-time web-designer, web hosting provider and blogger. OCAAT was designed by her as well, last year.

You definitely felt the difference if you are a regular reader. I check on blog stats multiple times a day, earlier it used to take eternity to load word press site stats page, now it’s so much faster.

About my life, getting busier day by day, this trend generally continues till November mid every year but, this time it will continue through Christmas and new year.

Finally getting a week’s break on the independence day week. The much awaited Yellowstone trip is on the cards. We were supposed to cover it last year but some of my team mates applied for leave earlier which prevented me from getting approval. Also, last year we had to go to India so, we preferred taking all leaves in one chunk.

Even after writing about all the strategies to lower your trip expense, I ended up paying a lot of money on flight, car and hotels. All due to procrastination! I should have started booking in March itself.

We couldn’t get any hotel room inside the park, they are booked till September. SMB is heart-broken by this. Lesson to be learned for the next trip. We are booked in hotels as far as 1 hr drive away from park entrances.

SMB started studying about the place and I am very upbeat and looking forward to this break.

Good reads around the web

While searching for new article idea I ran in to this master piece, not a new article though. 101 things to do in a public bathroom is the article you should read every time you are in a bad mood. If you want to make other happy let them read this article. One sample for you,

~ Knock on the stall next to you and say, “Do you have enough toilet paper in there? I got plenty if you need some.”

Wise Bread listed 25 reasons to get out of office chair. At least 10 of them applied to me. If you have a desk job you must read this and take action.

Christian PF lists 7 great money management apps for Android. SMB and I have iPhone. But I am sure these apps are available for iPhone too.

Money Crashers has valuable tips for jet setters, changing outfits quickly with accessories and clothes.

CNN Money ran a very informative piece, things to know about open houses. If you’re in the market or will be soon, you must read this one.

Teach your children this skill, is a very informative post. “However, just as important as teaching children about managing their finances is teaching them practical life skills that will save them money over their lifetimes.”

That’s it for today, have a nice rest of the weekend!