OMG, Completely overwhelmed (Part 2)

 

So it seems I may have corrected my non-compliance issue with the EU, yay I can start making money again!

(EU issue was that my site was listed as www.mass-imo.com/ instead of www.mass-imo.com, I don't even know where the / came from, as this is a Blogger template)

Now Google AdSense doesn't seem to work.

I'll gone through the code a dozen or so times this week so I'll dumb it down, as I really don't understand it all to well myself. 

• Google places advertisements on my site, based on who is visiting (they listen to you phone calls)
• Google can only place advertisements , if my site allows it (which is what I want)
• hidden on my site is a file (ads.txt) that gives Google permission to place advertisements 
• Google AdSense claims the ads.txt file is missing, so they can't place advertisements 
• in my attempts to fix this, I completely re-designed my website (as you may have noticed)
• to test functionality, I'm instructed to type in www.mass-imo.com/ads.txt
• if my publisher id comes up (which it does), then everything is working

YET GOOGLE STILL SAYS THERE ARE ERRORS

WHAT THE HECK!!!

• How am I using Blogger (a Google product)
• To advertise AdSense (a Google product)

And I'm still not able to get it working, this should be a simple turnkey process. 

The best part, is that this was working perfectly from 2010 to 2015. Then the EU compliance issue came into effect and I've stopped making any money since then. Listen it's not a lot of money to begin with (about $100 a year), but the viewership of this site has gone up considerably in the past 6 years. As a side hobby, making some $$ would be nice.

I end up spending so much time just maintaining the website, instead of actually blogging.

Anyone else run into these issues?

Is it time to pull the plug on Blogger? 

• What are some alternatives to Blogger?
• Is it easier to move to another platform, or should I solve these Blogger issues?
• Is there anything else out there for advertisement revenue besides AdSense?

Happy Canada Day

 

This post is a little late, as the weekend got away from me.

The artwork pictured above hangs in the front hallway of my house, a memory of my late father. My father was an avid outdoorsman, who spend many a weekend up in the Lytton and Lillooet area fishing it's many lakes for Rainbow and Dolly Varden trout.

So the story as I know it goes like this...

The artwork above is an oar/paddle carving of a salmon/eagle. It's carver is unknown to me, (there is a signature on the back, but I had never thought of having it researched) who lived in the Lytton-Lillooet area. 

It was on one hot summer day, during a weekend, some 35ish years ago. My father was driving the lonely dirt roads of the Lytton-Lillooet region to his favourite fishing spots. During his drive, my father came across a stranded car facing the opposite direction. I suspect most people, minding their own business would just drive by. That wasn't my father, a mechanic, he would often find himself pulling over to assist stranded motorists. The story, as I remember it, was that the stranded vehicle had overheated, caused by a blown radiator hose. A common enough problem, remedied quite simply at a shop was made ever so much more complex at the side of the road. While not a complete fix, my father managed to sufficiently repair the vehicle enough so as it's driver was no longer stranded and could safely make his way to the town garage. 

The vehicles driver was an indigenous artist from the region, who, in a token of appreciation offered my father the oar/paddle as thanks. Regretfully mentioning that the artwork had little to no value as it was an unfinished piece, something he was currently working on. 

I know my father wouldn't have wanted any momentary reward, and was probably hesitant to accept the artwork and did so more out of respect, to the artist.

I am so proud of the man I had as a father, even though we seldom saw eye to eye, he bestowed a great deal of wisdom in me. As an Italian immigrant, my father fell in love with Canada and it's inspiring beauty. It's forests which provide us with clean air, the melting mountain snow which provide us fresh water that fill our lakes and rivers, perfect for trout fishing. My father went on to become a Canadian citizen, put down roots, and has been placed to rest, in his new home...Canada. My father taught me that being Canadian meant respecting wildlife, nature, and your fellow man, values many of us born here take for granted. He taught me to treat people, as I want to be treated, and to always look out for those less fortunate. He taught me to always do my best, and have patience for those who weren't as capable.

I choose to celebrate Canada Day this year, not because I am insensitive to the hurt felt by our fellow indigenous brothers and sisters, but because of the bonds formed. In light of mistakes we may have found in our past, we as a nation are far from perfect, but we can always strive to be better.

Because we are Canadian.

Netflix and chill, no seriously just chill it's hot out there

Netflix and chill, no seriously just chill, cause this weather be crazy hot here in East Vancouver. I think I might have to put off blogging for a bit.

Anyways Black Summer Season 2 just dropped on the 17th of June, so last week, and I finally got to watch it. It's such a crazy show. 

For those of you into the zombie genre, which might be getting a bit played out, Black Summer is another strange take on post pandemic life. It's like the walking dead on adrenalin!

If you're at home trying to stay chill then why not throw this show on to kill some time.

OMG, Completely overwhelmed

 

It's been a while since I was blogging on the regular.

It's been even longer since I started this blog.

Well, it seems I've neglected a bunch of stuff over the years, and it's time to fix everything.

Fun Facts 

#1. European laws dictate you need to have security imbedded into you domains through a DNS service?

- I honestly thought I had done this when I click ok.

Well here is the problem, I started this blog (and other blogs) as a free service from Blogger (google). I later went on to purchase this (and other) domains from Blogger (google). Blogger (google) purchased the domains (on my behalf) from GoDaddy. 

So now when I need to do an update, I use the Blogger interface which send me to the Google interface, which redirects me to the GoDaddy interface, which lets me make changes. Well, somewhere along this chain, I lost access. Normally I just use the auto-password and auto-login from site to site, but I lost a password, or changed it, or changed my user name or something happened. I now use safeincloud which helps tremendously (I am not sponsored by them, purchased it and use it). 

I'm stuck, I can't seem to make changes, Oh well F*it, I'll suffer the wrath of the EU.

This non-compliance has been going on for some time now, and some people have even reported to me that mass-imo.com, no longer works in search engines, and that they can only get to my site using www.mass-imo.com, of which I am truly remorseful.

I want to give blogging another chance to monetize (to earn some money, since I retired from my day job), and tie in Facebook/Instagram monetization and maybe start vlogging (we will see). Monetizing is no longer as simple as it used to be, in that there is so much tax info needed, oh and you also have to be EU compliant!

WhatTheHeck! 

This EU compliance is going to be the end of me.

I'm currently wading through all the interfaces and re-submitting for access, trying to determine which username is associated with with which domain, which password is associated with that username, and getting them all to communicate in harmony.

My plan is to...

1. Resolve this EU issue
2. Possibly host this blog on my own server (not sure how to do it, so it's learning curve).
3. Get this blog re-monetized through Blogger (google)
4. Get this blog monetized through Facebook/Instagram
5. Bring vlogging to this site.

If anyone has any suggestions or help, drop me a line.

Retirement

So this just happened... 

Not to long ago I received a package in the mail from the United Food and Commercial Workers union local 247. Inside the package was the certificate shown above,

this letter,

and this watch.

This is such a nice and thankful thought, a big thanks to the UFCW staff and members world wide.

So this might come to some who frequent www.mass-imo.com as a shock, but I recently retired from my "life defining" job of 31 years as a retail worker/cashier/attendant. I say life defining, because I have always found it somewhat comical how, when you meet people, they almost always ask what you do for a profession. You're answer to this question, will ultimately somehow determine your worth to them, or your overall worldly worth. I was always at a loss because there is so much more that I've accomplished in life, and more to me than merely my cashier status. 

Anyways that chapter of my life has closed, and we will see what the future holds.