Blogging | Piss and Moan

Lost gumption

Not feeling great about the status of the blog at this point. I had fours posts in April and five in May. It appears all the air has been let out of the balloon and I have lost all my gumption. A part of me really cares that I can’t get stuff on the screen and then another part of me doesn’t really care at all.

I have stuff to say, but is it worth saying? It will just piss people off and, sure, that was part of the point of this blog but at the same time there is so much hate for the truth these days (and I mean REAL truth, not the “my truth” BS). The point of the blog was just to vent and get crap off my chest because I often don’t feel I can actually talk to the people around me.

Perhaps I care too much and should care less.

Perhaps I don’t care enough and should care more.

So, if you seen my gumption laying around anywhere tell it to “Go home” or put it in a box and ship it to me.

Influencer tendencies

Posted on 6 Days Ago by backuphill

I am not totally sure how the whole “influencer” thing start or how you achieve “influencer” status. Is it something you aspire to or do you just fall into it by having something go viral? I guess it doesn’t matter as I haven’t much desire to be an influencer, though having money for seemingly doing nothing would be nice.

A couple things that I have noticed about influencers:

Female influencers tend to
- Post a lot of clothing “fit check” photos
- Post videos of their makeup/skincare/hair routines
- Show more skin to get more clicks/looks/views/likes/shares
- Share a lot of food videos/pictures
- Shopping “haul” videos
- Product reviews…solicited and unsolicited
Male influencers tend to
- Post a lot of car videos photos
- Post a lot of prank videos
- Post “fit check” photos
- Share food and alcohol videos/photos
- Generally are way shallow in content

Did I miss anything? Is this how you get to be an influencer?

Anyway, I don’t know why I wrote about this today. I guess it was just on my mind and was wondering what others thought about the trend of “influencers.” Do you foresee a future with this trend continuing or do you think it will eventually tire itself out?

Hide forever

Posted on March 7 by backuphill

Anyone else having a hard time getting that ad for fiverr and logo creation on their My Home page to go away?

I have clicked the drop down to “Hide Forever” like 100 times and all that happens is that the spinny thing comes up and just spins and spins. The next time I go to the page, it’s still there and I try again.

It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be able to make it go away…

WordPress ads a scam?

Posted on January 31 by backuphill

One of the many things you can do here on WordPress is earn money from your blog. There are (apparently) quite a few ways to do this. One of the more simple ways to earn money (at least I thought) was to show ads on your site, specifically on your posts. Seems simple enough, right? Write something. Post it. Ads show up on your page as people view it. You make money from them seeing the ads.

I did this a while back and I am starting to wonder if its a bit of a scam as there doesn’t really appear to be a rhyme or reason to how you earn money. Yes, I am aware that the more volume/traffic you have is supposed to get you more ads displayed, which I thought in turn would also create more money added to your account. It doesn’t, however, seem that this is actually the case.

I experimented a while back, August of 2022, to see if I could figure out how to earn more. What I found is that traffic doesn’t exactly mean you earn more. As such, I am beginning to wonder if using WordPress ads is a scam.

Here’s the thing: If an ad (any ad) is displayed anywhere on my blog, shouldn’t I get paid? They are allowed to insert an ad in my content – literally renting space on my site to display an ad that a company paid them to display. Forget the whole “bidding” thing. Volume shouldn’t matter. If an ad takes space on my site, I should get paid (at minimum) $0.01 per ad. But it looks like they get to rent space for any ad for free, even though they were paid for the advertising by the company purchasing space. If they are randomly generated and randomly displayed, there is nothing to really debate here. If this post has two ads displayed each time it is viewed, I should get paid for the two ads displayed during each view.

But, apparently it doesn’t work that way. Misleading, isn’t it?

A few shots to show a comparison. The first set of pics displays one of the best months I have seen while having ads on my site. As you can see, “Ads Served” doesn’t necessarily mean more income since September 2020 had more ads served but October 2020 had fewer ads but more income. Seems rather random, doesn’t it?

So, that sure makes one wonder when looking at how this whole thing works. Doesn’t it? Here are the test results from (basically) two year later.

August of 2022 saw 846 ads served – the most ever since I set this up – and yet was only paid $0.01. Notice the month prior (July 2022) only 206 ads were served but the earnings were the same as the following month. Yet, June of 2022 saw even fewer ads served but there was triple the earnings.

Got questions now? Yeah, me too. But I am leaning towards WordPress cheating the people they “rent” space from.

They need to pay for ALL ads served. Pure and simple.

Sucky search

Posted on January 18 by backuphill

Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi on Pexels.com

Not helpful. Not helpful at all.

Why is that when I click on the “Search” tab on the Reader page that 90% of the stuff that comes up is related to one of the dumbest sports on the planet – basketball? Why is it that I get a lot of results to basketball, hockey, soccer (football), and other things I have never, EVER, searched for? I don’t click on them either so why do the results continue to return things I am not interested in?

Anyone else notice this?

How are the search results determined? They certainly aren’t related to any tags or categories I use in my own blog, so where or how does it work?

I have tried searching for things I am interested on to change the results and it hasn’t helped at all.

So, I get a sucky search. Completely useless for finding new blogs I might be interested in.

Way to go WordPress. So helpful.

Not improved

Posted on January 4 by backuphill

The first post of the new year is to let all of you know that nothing here has changed. The site is not “new and improved.” I am not new and improved. I don’t intended to make anything new or improve anything. Everything will stay the same and I will stay the same.

I am still grumpy.

I am still cantankerous.

I am still going to complain.

I am still irritable.

I am still shaking my head at all the BS around me.

I am still gonna Piss & Moan.

Have no fear, things around here aren’t going to change. So, as you read all these upbeat and overly optomistic posts on other sites about this looking (or hoping) like a better new year, just know you aren’ going to get any of that crap here.

Nothing is changing.

Hope is pointless since it will likely be dashed asap.

Just shrug your shoulders and keep trudging along.

Fury fuel

Posted on September 23 by backuphill

Trying out something new. I have been playing with the idea for a while and then I thought, “What the hell! I don’t have anything to lose by doing it.”

So, if you click on that Menu button on the upper right of the page, you’ll see a new button to donate via PayPal.

If you feel led to do so, send me $5 of your hard earned money. I’ll appreciate ever so much!

Just think of it as fuel for my fury.

With just one more cup of coffee I can produce content that will make you think, make you laugh, make you shake your head in disgust, make you see something from a different point of view.

Really. With just $5.

Pretty good deal if you ask me.

Tap. Tap. Is this thing on?

Posted on June 8 by backuphill

Gonna do a simple test, because shadow ban…is it real? There are 618 followers here. I know not all of them are real. If you see this post, however, PLEASE click LIKE. Let’s see if my suspicions is true.

Is the reach of the blog being limited?

Spring cleaning

Posted on March 11, 2022 by backuphill

I started going through the list of “followers” a couple of days ago. The number of “people” following this blog is astonishingly filled with a huge number of abandoned or completely inauthentic accounts. There are so many fake accounts, bot accounts, or inactive accounts. As such, I have started deleting them. I am watching the number of “followers” dwindle and its a little disheartening.

Truth be told, I didn’t start this place to vent so I would gain a huge following and suddenly become the next internet sensation. It truly was a place to vent about anything and everything. If it struck a cord with people or caused them to be interested in what the next topic might be or identified with what I was saying, great. I welcome any and (almost) all interaction.

But, it the disheartening part is that the actual number of people who might really be paying attention is kinda small. I still have a lot of cleaning up to do and so those number of “followers” will surely shrink.

I guess one of the questions we really have to ask of other bloggers is what that number of “followers” they claim to have actually is. I see accounts all the time with a large number of followers but I now wonder how many of those numbers are actual people and not just fake accounts.

Do other bloggers pay any attention to this or are the numbers simply just a number to brag about, to market their blog to others based on inflated data? Does it really matter to a company if the numbers a blogger (or other social media influencer) has are authentic or are they just simply looking for people with a large “audience”?

Questions I don’t really care to know the answer to, I guess. I suppose I am just talking out loud here. But it makes me wonder…

Shadow banned?

Posted on February 9, 2022 by backuphill

Anyone else kinda feel like when they talk about certain topics that they are getting shadow banned? I am starting to get a bit suspicious of WordPress.

For those who don’t know what a “shadow ban” is, you can read more about it in lots of different places. You hear about this taking place on lots of different social media platforms & accounts these days – mostly in regards to topics related to events, facts, data, and personalities of significance over the last 2+ years.

I don’t know if there is a way to really tell on the WP service, but I have noticed that certain topics definitely get fewer clicks/views than other topics. Maybe it’s because people are bored with the topics. Maybe people aren’t stimulated by certain subjects any longer. Maybe people are just to overly apathetic so the disinterest wins out. I don’t know.

Could it be the Categories I am using, or the tags? Is it the actual subject matter? I haven’t a clue. I guess I could try reposting a blog with different tags and categories and see if there is any different response.

Anyone else feel like they don’t get as much interest when it comes to certain “controversial” issues?