Entries from February 2008 ↓

Since I have been writing for Wise Bread I have found that my idea of a good blog post is sometimes very different from what is a popular blog post. I have pretty much figured out what makes an article popular, and I shall list my observations here.

1. The article is controversial - For example, a Wise Bread blogger wrote about copying her photographer’s photos and a lot of photographers were up in arms about it and the article got a lot of views. It seems that if you piss off a lot of people you will get a lot of attention. This is not necessarily good all the time.

2. The article gets linked by a big site - This is hit or miss. Sometimes an article is linked by a big site because it is awesome, but sometimes it is just lucky. For example, my article about staying warm got to the front page of Digg because a top digger liked it and submitted it. I personally thought it was not my best work. I really liked this article about Julius Rock a lot better. Social networks are also kind of gamed in that those who are very popular can make your article popular if they submit your article. So even if they do “digg” or “stumble” your article but it was submitted by a less popular user then your article would not become popular as quickly. So there is a lot of luck involved in social bookmarking.

3. The article provides information that many people are seeking - Lately a super popular article on Wise Bread is just a link to the download of Suze Orman’s book. This is information people who watched Oprah were seeking, and a lot of people found Wise Bread through Google because of that simple post. Similarly my post about a Pinecone Research link was very easy to write, but attracted more people than many of the posts I actually worked on more. So if you happen to have popular information you could have a very easy and simple blog article.

4. The article is really well written and original - There are definitely instances where a quality article appears and becomes very popular by the votes of many different people, but I think that only happens 10 to 20% of the time. Even when an article is really awesome it still takes the right amount of luck to become extremely popular. If a site is visited by very little people then there is very little chance for it to get more exposure.

So what can you do to make your blog articles popular? First, you need a good amount of traffic, then you need to write a mixture of controversial and well written posts, and hopefully submit it to the right people. It really takes patience, luck, and a lot of writing.

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In my article about how I saved $30,000 in college I wrote that I entered a lot of sweepstakes, and some people are curious how exactly that works. Today I will share in detail what I did, and give some tips through what I learned.

1. Use a sweepstakes list - It is time consuming to find out about individual sweekstakes yourself. What I did was use online-sweepstakes.com. It is a great community and forum with thousands of contests that you can enter. It used to be completely free, but now there is a subscription fee for some of the premium content (more sweeps and site specific contests). I paid subscription for one year because I won so many things from there.

2. Use a sweepstakes only email address - This is to prevent spam and newsletters from rendering your main email address useless. No matter how hard you try, if you are a sweeper you may be spammed.

3. Always read the rules - You should always read the rules and see if you qualify. Otherwise, if you won something and then got disqualified it would be a sad loss. Usually sweepstakes disallow Floridians to enter because of the laws there. Liquor companies also do not allow Californians to enter for prizes worth more than $5.00.

4. Try to enter contests sponsored by reputable companies - This is important because there are scammers out there that try to collect emails and addresses and then sell these lists. If you only deal with companies that are fairly well known then the chance of being scammed is lessened greatly.

5. Use a form filler - The most popular form filling software I have seen is Roboform. Before Roboform I had to write my own form fillers. It is usually not against the rules to use Roboform to fill out a contest entry.

6. Enter local contests or limited entry contests for better chances - Some contests have rules that say they are limited to the first X number of entrants. These contests will give you a much better chance at winning. Local television and radio stations are also good places to look for contests because the pool of entrants is much smaller than a national contest.

7. Never give out money - Sweepstakes should be no purchase necessary. This is the law. If a sweepstakes asks for money or credit card information you should avoid it. There should be no entry fees of any kind.

These are the basics of sweeping, but there are a lot of other things I learned through the few years I was a sweeper. A lot of sweepers are stay at home moms and they are generally very friendly. The key is to be careful when you are online and supplying private information. You also have to be persistent to win. I have won some very nice prizes and tried many products that I would otherwise not have bought. So I think if you have a lot of free time on your hands it is a good hobby.

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This morning as I drove to work I saw a cluster of pink and red balloons flying into a vast and endless blue sky. I laughed to myself in the car because I imagined a poor man somewhere on the other side of the street watching the $40 he just spent flying away. Anyway, my Valentine’s Day article is receiving a lot of views on Wise Bread today. My hubby read my article and he is going to cook for me!! I am so excited! He is preparing a sea scallop and mushroom risotto with some homemade mushroom and spinach ravioli. *drools*

Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day if you’re into it. Just remember that it’s a capitalistic conspiracy for you to pull out your wallets. Resist if you can!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story. If you have missed the first three posts they are here:
Fifteen Years in America — An Introduction
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 1)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 2)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 3)
Enjoy!

The plane landed at Tokyo International Airport for a transfer, and then flew directly to Honolulu International Airport. We left Shanghai on the morning of August 15th, but because of the time difference we landed in Honolulu in the afternoon of August 15th after flying for fourteen hours. The reunion of our family on August 15th has finally arrived! At the airport, we saw Helen, the person we have been missing day and night for over a year. She was wearing a sky blue dress decorated with large pink flowers that my old classmate An Lang’s wife made for her. Because Hawaii’s sun, she was tanned, and she seemed a bit slimmer than I last saw her, but she was quite energetic. When she saw us she hugged our daughter tight and repeated over and over, “Xin-head, mommy missed you so much! Mommy missed you so much! Do you miss mommy?” Xin nodded her head, but she was really thinking of her new Game Boy.

When we exited the airport, Helen’s landlady Lory drove our entire family onto the highway with her Mazda. For the first time I saw a highway several lanes wide with cars flying through it. It is a scene I have only seen in movies, and it finally hit me that I was in an unfamiliar country. Even though this was Hawaii, one of the famed scenic spots in the world, I did not have the appetite to enjoy the scenery. When we arrived at Lory’s home, Helen took us to a nearby McDonalds for a meal. It was Xin’s first time eating at McDonalds, and she enjoyed it very much, but I was not used to eating raw vegetables between bread. More importantly, I thought about how I had no way to go back, and I did not know what lies ahead, and I wondered how I was going to survive.

Now, I must give everyone a few basic facts about Hawaii. Hawaii is a group of islands including the four main islands of Hawaii (also known as the Big Island because it has the largest area), O’ahu, Maui, and Kauai. Additionally there are hundreds of smaller atolls and islands. Honolulu is the state capital of Hawaii, and it is on O’ahu. At that time Honolulu had over 800,000 inhabitants. Hawaii is the 50th state of the United States, and it is also the last state to enter the union in year 1959. Hawaii has three main industries in its economy: tourism, tropical agriculture, and the United States military.  When I arrived in Hawaii, it was in the midst of a serious recession.  Since the Cold War  just ended, America reduced its troops in Hawaii and that caused quite a bit of unemployment.  Additionally, because of the rising costs of agricultural wages in Hawaii and the increase supply of tropical fruits from South America, the competitiveness of Hawaiian agricultural products was drastically falling.  Even though at the beginning of the 90s Japan’s economy was weakening, the Japanese yen was still quite strong against the dollar.  Almost half of the tourists that came to Hawaii were Japanese, and thus most of Hawaii’s economy was supported by tourism.

Since our entire family arrived in Hawaii, we were not able to fit in Lory’s home.  However, a friend from school introduced Helen to another live in situation.  This time, we were to live with a 93 year old  Chinese lady.  We called her “popo”, which means grandma in Chinese.  She had a huge house near the foot of Diamond Head.  Popo came to Hawaii as a child bride in the early 1900s.  Her husband died quite early, and she worked as a housekeeper and raised five children by herself.  Two of her children are engineers, one is a shop keeper, one is a real estate agent, and another is a teacher.  Popo had a bad temper, and often yelled at her children.  Even though her children were very filial, they were also terrified by her.  Even though she had quite a full house of descendants, none of them wanted to live with her.  She gave our family a very large bedroom and did not charge us rent.  In exchange, we cleaned the house and maintained the yard.  When we cooked dinner we also shared food with her.  Thus we were able to settle down in Hawaii.

Stay tuned for chapter 2!!  

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I have decided to do the update of San Mateo homes every 4 weeks, and the last update is pretty interesting. In 4 weeks there were 126 unique properties totaling 142 listings that are listing less than their last sale price. This is an increase of 50% from the last report in January. Here are some highlights.

Total Count of San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble for 1/14/2008 to 2/10/2008: 126

Average Time from Last Sale Date: 1.87 Years

Average Annualized Loss: 14.1%

Average Absolute Percentage Loss: 24.8%

Average Size of Home: 1224

Average Price Per Square Foot: $444.42

Biggest Loser: 649 Hurlingame Ave in Redwood City with an annualized loss of 77%

A notable home is this mansion in Hillsbourough, which sold for 7.9 million dollars in 2001, but is now listing for 6.95 million. I guess we are rolling back to 2001? It is a beautiful property from the looks of the pictures. This is the most expensive listing I have found to date.

In the spreadsheet you will see that over 1/4 of the properties have listing prices that are over 25% less than their last sale price. The worst example is a home that is listing for 47.5% less than its last price. It seems that the Goldman Sach’s prediction of Californian homes losing 40% of their value is coming true one house at a time.

I expect that the next report will be even worse as more people try to list their homes for the spring selling season. They will be competing with so many banks and other desperate home sellers who already have their homes on the market. There is quite a bit of news that many homedebtors are just mailing their keys back to their lenders, and that may be a prudent thing to do if it costs even more to carry the home and try to sell it.

Until next time, enjoy!

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