The blog has moved !

our homemade postcard 

Dear Readers,

After all those happy years of blogging (2006-2015), here on this platform blogger / blogspot, I have moved my blog (to here).

Thank you Blogger.com !

Blogger is a great blogging platform. I always said that, and I still believe it is the best choice for bloggers: it's easy, flexible and free! It should be the first choice for starters. And I have helped others who needed a little web presence to get started with blogger.

The Guest Residence

Over the years, the blog that started out with chronicling our renovation project, has become more than a blog. It is almost a brand! ... After our renovation project was finally accomplished, we decided to rent out our guest residence. In the beginning it was just for fun. Then it became a good way to contribute to the running cost of the house. We even named the residence after the blog - somehow it seemed logical as it was all about web presence.

Growing and new focus

Since then, the focus shifted more towards travel information for travelers who want to spent days in Pizzo, discover Calabria, and live like an Italian in a vacation rental - in our Palazzo Pizzo Residence. But of course, I will keep blogging!

As blogger started offering 'pages' it became easy to organise a blog like a website. However, the landing page is always the blog. If you grow out of blogging, or it is not your main focus anymore, a new website might organise and host more different aspects of your 'brand'.

I did my homework, researched a lot, and wrote about all options. At the end, I decided to move from blogger to Squarespace. Their choice of templates is not too overwhelming while they offer the best designed templates. And you can combine the best of them. Further, their customer support is unbelievably fast, and their price is reasonable.

Stay connected!

Dear readers, thank you for connecting with me and the blog over the years. Of course, I continue blogging - at my own slow pace. When you have been already subscribed to the RSS blog feed  you don't have to change a thing. If not, subscribe now.

I also plan a newsletter - just twice a year - about our South Italian projects. Soon, we will have a soft opening of two more apartments in Pizzo! Exciting? Want to hear about it? You can also now sign up for for the newsletter at our new homepage (see footer).

Mille grazie, tanti saluti ed a presto

Susan
www.PalazzoPizzo.com


PS: This version of the blog on blogger remains accessible. You can use the search function and labels below to browse my posts. However, 99% is imported and available in a new look. See you there!

Advertising on Blogs and spamming

spam comments with hidden ad links

Hello dear fellow bloggers,

this is an open letter to ask about your experience with advertisers and your blog.

I am bogging for eight years now (since end of 2006) and when my blog had started to reach a Google Pager Rank of 3, enquires of advertisers dropped in. It was fun! And rewarding! Some bloggers, the professional ones, who posted 3 posts a week (that was a target back then), could probably almost live from their blogs. I only made little pocket money, but it would have paid the cost of web hosting and some cups of coffee.

Advertising back then was a text link or banner on your blog roll (blog list) for a certain company that paid by month or year in advance via paypal.

Some companies would even send sample products that bloggers could review on their blog. You would get the product for free. Sometimes a partner program was also in place. Bloggers would earn for every click or product sale referred from their blog. I am sure that still works with the top bloggers.

Then the more sneaky offers came. "Can you do a text link somewhere inside a blog post of our choice?" Yeah, hidden advertising for 5 USD a link that remains there for ever. No way!

And with the rise of social media, like Facebook, blogs seemed to have become less interesting for advertisers. (Ok, in my case, I am not the frequent writer and that's of course a reason for advertisers to stop renewing a co-operations. But then, why on earth I get spam comments every single day?)

Why do these people (or robots?) submit constantly different comments with different hidden text links referring to different companies on different posts, every single day?

They prefer older posts, hoping their hidden links get on your blog unrecognized ... But who hasn't 'comment moderation' on? BTW, in comment moderation you do not see the hidden links and they often even have a blogger profile, see photo. But Blogger has a very efficient spam filter in place.

No doubt, that top bloggers are always interesting for advertisers as popular websites always have and always will be. But how about the casual long-time blogger (like me) ?

I think, the explanation for many of these annoying spam comments are spam sending 'robots' that pick blogs and place comments anonymously and just randomly. Not for selling goods, but to boost the page rank of their clients who are mainly small companies. Or they are private people who get referral fees for clicks on their links. All these advertising links try to sell various products: from tiles and furniture to software products, SEO services, to English schools.

Very curious about your experience with advertising on your blog lately. Please share!

Would love to hear from you,
kind regards
Susan

Why Blogger is better for bloggers than Wordpress or Squarespace

Once every now and then I try to re-design my blog. And it's about time to have a real website that integrates this blog. Therefore, I did some massive research on the Internet, to find out the advantages and disadvantages between Bloger vs Wordpress vs Squarespace vs Wix vs Weebly and others ... 

The internet offers fantastic information on many tech blogs and youtube - but you need to be careful: Most comparisons between Blogger and Wordpress, or Wordpress and Squarespace are written by great IT experts who often happen to be affiliates of one of these sites - and then it can get biased. Or they claim everything is so complicated because they want to sell their own web development / web design skills.

What you cannot do, is to compare Blogger with Wordpress.org - because it is like comparing apples with oranges! You need to compare Blogger's free service with Wordpress's free-ish service at Wordpress.com (dot com). And then Wordpress(.com) looses and Blogger wins! At least that's what bloggers like me say, with blogs powered by Blogger for many years (me, now almost 8 years), and who know how to easily personalise your blog here at Blogger or BlogSpot, not even much HTML coding is required (but it is allowed).

To learn more about the blogging platform and features of Blogger vs Wordpress, and to be able to make a decision, you should read the most unbiased article I found on the internet by Make Use Of. I totally recommend to read Tim Brookes' post and also to read through the comments as he answeres all the questions of his readers and that might answer your questions too.

My short (2 days) experience with Wordpress allows me to say that freedom feels different. I couldn't believe that they shot down my new page (in the making, not even having content yet!). Although, another 2 days later they appologised for the mistake, and I am free to continue (and was asked to delete my cookies as they detected spam). But does that make me feel confident?

Wordpress(.com) can also shot your blog down when they detect any paid or affiliate links. BUT they are free to place any advertising into your posts! Don't like that? You can pay for an ad-free page. Want some small changes in your design? Pay some bugs extra! Videos? Only if you pay 60 USD per year! A favicon (small logo in the URL)? Costs extra! And pointing your own domain to yourname.wordpress.com page is possible, but you need to pay 13 USD per year (not including the registration)... Calculate, it adds up! That's why I say WordPress is "free-ish", as it is not really free.

In seven years with Blogger I had no single technical issue, and unlimited space for media, including videos, my own favicon and no charge for pointing my personalised domain name to my blog. So why I would think of changing after all?

Well, I wasn't a very active blogger (I never made the three posts per week rule). But although I blog less and less (our mission, the renovation and main content of this blog, is accomplished), I want to keep my little writing playround. And now, our beautiful guest residence requires some internet presence as well. - Before starting all over with a new website, I thought, it would be nice to have a professionally looking welcome page, a static landing page, instead of landing on the latest blog post.

My blog needs a static landingpage! 

I tried to tweak Blogger a bit in order to have a static landing page (and another page called "Blog" would feature the blog posts). I followed these intructions to create a static home page.  It is really simple and worked. The problem that I saw however, was a longer loading time. The redirecting worked fine on the PC and on the tablet, but did not work for the smart phone. The error message was about server cannot be loaded due to too many redirection. Also it did not look that great as your landing page shouldn't have a blogroll. With blogger however you cannot change the template design for single pages. There is one frame for all. And a blog needs a blogroll. Otherwise what is the point of blogging if you cannot engage your readers? 

On the internet there are many rumours that Google would close its blogging platform Blogger one day, as sudden as they closed Google Reader. It would be a pitty as Blogger is really easy to handle and you can make your blog look good with the "simple template" and then play around with the template in the advanced modus, or tweaking around with HTML and CSS - and it is all free! You are not even forced to use Google Adsense.

And then there is Squarespace. They are very, very good in martketing their platform! It seems like a hype (maybe their affiliate program is so attractive). They are already around since 10 years with 1,8 million websites/blogs. - They have a different approach. You need to pay a monthly fee. For that you get access to the web building software with top stylish templates and all seems easy to handle. And you have access to a 24/7 custmer support which is great in the beginning. They seem super nice and let you import your blog from Blogger (and others) and export your website to Wordpress, in case you want to terminate the hosting plan ... sounds fair enough.

Squarespace let you try out their templates 14 days for free and then you need to decide if you want to publish with them. I liked it. Their templates are clean and 'pretty'. Great for photographers and artist who want to show their work in galleries. Or for restaurant owners (there is a plug-in for a menue). BUT the features for a blog are very limited! As a blogger I would not choose this solution. I deem Squarespace is mainly for small businesses that do just a little bit of blogging on the side. There is no Html-CSS-fiddling-DIY-tweaking allowed.

Of coures there are many other platforms beside Blogger, Wordpress and Squarespace. A good overview and comparison can be visited here by the Website Builders. I checked Weebly and Wix as well, but they don't have the same good looking templates / themes as Wordpress or Squarespace, and furthermore they also cost some money for ads-free pages, favicon and domain pointing.

In the meantime, I returned to my blog powered by Blogger and have to say, it still looks okay. (I have now moved the blogroll(s) to the bottom of the layout). All these modern stylish minimalistic pages are maybe not even suitable for my love of the simple life in Southern Italy. And blogger is totally free - so best value!

For now, I will continue with Blogger. And one day I might either have a peaceful deal with Squarespace or my self-hosted website with Wordpress.org (dot org and NOT dot com).

About changing a blog into a website ...

UPDATE 05/05/14 :  www.palazzopizzo.com is back and pointing !


I have been experimenting a bit to combine my two blogs www.palazzopizzo.blogspot.com and www.palazzopizzoresidence.blogspot.com. And after having diverted the pointer I couldn't set it back. Now, I am waiting for a technical helper to enter required code names into the Domain Name System .... (update: it's done)

In the meantime, I continue searching for a solution. I need a static front page, a landing page that does not look like a blog. I want a welcome page that guides those to the blog who want to read my posts and those to our vacation rental who are planning a holiday in Southern Italy.

So I followed some intstuctions I found on the web to tweak Blogger to use a static page as homepage. (...)  It all worked fine, at least on my desktop and tablet - but not on the smart phone (too many redirection), also the loading became slow. And you still have a blogroll on your welcome page... so I changed all back.

Wordpress and Squarespace are the platforms that offer a bit more than blogger when it comes to templates (themes) and pages. But should I dump my partner of seven years? Blogger never let me down! Never. If you are just blogging, there is no reason to change. Blogger is even easier to handle!

My experience with Wordpress lasted two (!) days (!). I worked two days to set up my website (with the "Stay" Theme), learning by doing, no content, just the structure, when all in a sudden I saw RED. Wordpress had kicked me out! A red banner was saying: your website is suspended due to violation of our terms and conditions!!
That was it! No more access.
The website wasn't even finished!

Shouldn't this be enough of a hint for me to stay with blogger?
Blogger is free with unlimited space, Squarespace starts at 8$/month and Wordpress (.com) is free-ish. For the best looking templates you have to pay. For minor adjustments (blue font?) you need to pay. And you even need to pay to have your site free of advertisement as they have the right to place ads into your posts (while you would again violate their terms and conditions when having paid links). Want to point your own domain to your Wordpress.com site? You need to pay.

While editing this post, I received an apology from Wordpress for their error and any inconvenience. They somehow detected spam, and I will have to delete my cookies before opening the site.

After that I signed up for the 14 days free trial with Squarespace. They are great for stylish websites. But if you are a blogger, then you will miss what are basics at Blogger: spelling check, better statistics, x most read posts in the last x days, you also might like these posts-widget, and an archive! (BTW I use an invisible counter from www.statcounter.com for more details).

Shortly after I messed with my domain name, I also got mail from GOOGLE, saying that they "detected a significant increase" in 404 (Page Not Found) errors for PalazzoPizzo.com - I am flattered - will fix it!

The only two things that would make me change platforms are :
1) the need of a static internet presence increased while the the blog became secondary.
2) Google who owns Blogger might decide all in a sudden to close this platform.

Let's see how my trial with Squarespaces works out...
Hopefully, I can greet you soon with a new look!

Happy month of May!

A presto
S.

Spring Cleaning in May - about updating and closing blogs

In searching for a translation of the German proverb: "Alles neu macht der Mai", I found "April showers bring forth May flowers". It is not a very close translation, but it has the same optimistic feeling of change. And that's what I wanted to tell you. I made a few changes on this blog, a kind of spring cleaning.

Bougainvillea on the sidewalk, Bangkok 

 

I was not happy with my side bar anymore. It was too cluttered. I remember, I had split the side bar into two columns to accommodate advertisers. Ha ha, but my blog has just one sponsored text link at the moment! So, I filled up the far right column with lots of eye candy books. But after all, it was too much. I feel, the trend goes back to more simple looks for blogs. Have you observed something similar?

That's why I moved all the beautiful coastal living and Italian interior books to my existing, but never used "BookStore". Check it out here :-) ! You will make me happy with a little amazon's commission (4% of the book sales price). No price difference for you. - BTW, talking about decluttering, I am still looking for a good book about Feng Shui - any recommendation?

My bookstore is not the only new "page" (or tab) on this blog. New is also "Life in Asia". I will explain.

kung fu vases from Spin, Beijing with red orchids

While living in China, I started my two blogs, Beijing Notebook and Palazzo Pizzo. This was over six years ago. Random observations noted in Beijing and a documentation of a renovation in the South of Italy - I decided to NOT combine the two subjects. My readership on both blogs had different interest. Just a few readers, came visiting me on both blogs.

After having moved from Beijing in 2008, I only sporadically updated my China blog. But my posts are still valuable and many new reader visit every day. Although, I am now looking for a nice last post, this blog will remain open for ever.

When we planned to move to Bangkok, Thailand in 2010, I started a third blog. And last week, I shut it down. Without prior notice. I was surprised myself. I just had to click one button. It is not deleted. But just not public anymore. Why? Lack of inspiration, lack of motivation. I deem Beijing is a lot more interesting than Bangkok. There was much more culture I was attracted to. My Bangkok blog bored myself more and more.

But being a good and happy blogger has not only to do with the subject you write about. Blogging is also interaction with readers - although, many blogger do not comment anymore on other blogs (I am pretty quiet myself). But even if I don't get comments on every post, I have an idea about who my readers are. I had a very nice readership over at Beijing Notebook. They enjoyed the information I provided, and that made me happy.

I also do have reliable and friendly readers here on Palazzo Pizzo. You know that, you are one of them! And I always enjoyed the blogging design community. I got and still get the best advises and inspiration online from design addict blogger and interior designers online! I love it!

I think, one of the reasons I had no more fun with my Bangkok blog, is that I never really connected with the readers. One day, I got my first insulting comment. When I published the comment and answered politely, it got even worse. I never ever had bad comments on my other blogs during my six years of blogging. Funnily enough, I am apparently not the only female blogger in this country who had to deal with strange comments. It seems a tricky environment.

While spring cleaning my blog today, I had a flash of inspiration. I want to give a new combination a try! I hope you are not only here to read about Italy, or renovation, and kitchen remodelling. Maybe, some readers wonder sometime about my life in our adopted home, away from our Italian home? These posts will be labeled "Life in Asia". And I promise, I will not overdo it. What do you think?

 

Spring cleaning... mmmhh, apart from some new content, maybe an even more visible face-lift is necessary?!  Do you still like the look of my blog?? Although I am writing mainly about an over 200 years old house, it does not mean that this blog has to look like over 200 years old ... 

Saluti
suzie


Photo copyright: Palazzo Pizzo

Can you trust Google Affiliate Network? - A bad experience with SIXT

When you blog for so many years like I do, slowly your blogs move up in the page ranking and advertisers become interested in your page. That is as flattering as getting comments from readers, I have to admit. So I had some advertisers over the years and made some pocket money on the side. When Google Affiliate Network came up with advertisers that could match, I never joint any program until I saw SIXT, the German car rental company from Munich.

Every tourist who comes to Calabria rents a car at the airport, unless they drive all the way down to Southern Italy. So I thought, why not give it a try with my Italian blog.

Just this summer holiday, my friends needed to rent a car. They decided to do it online in advance rather than on spot at the airport. They compared prices and thought that SIXT is competitive. This is when I suggested to them to book the car via my blog. I said this is the best way to find out how the Google Affiliate Network Program with SIXT works.

And I found out: It does NOT work!

When I asked the agent who was indicated by Google Affiliate Network for help, he seemed customer oriented in the beginning and asked for my customer ID etc. But then I never received any explanation. And another month later, when I asked again what he found out I got this reply by email:

Mark DeBenedetto from Direct Agents, the agency that handles SIXT via the google affiliate program, did not give any explanation why there was no commission for an online booking. He does not even bother or apologise. - Why is he an agent? What for? - Oh, here no more answer at all.

I do not see any help center at the Google Affiliate Network site where I could complain directly about this agent. And I have no interest in waisting my time to search for any SIXT contact person.

The only way I can complain, is to blog about it.

Usually, I do not abuse my blog to talk about bad experience with restaurants, airlines or other public entities because my personal experience might be coincidence. But in this case, I write about it because I have no other voice. Also it is in the interest of other bloggers who trust these programs which are not directly under their control.

I assume that SIXT was too new to the program and I was a victim of a technical error.
But then, at least I want an apology.

Today, I removed the banner of this company from my blog roll. Never again I will sign up for any other affiliate program (beside the one from amazon, the one I know and trust since many years).

Please leave a comment if you have any good or bad experience with affiliate programs. It is an interesting topic.

Blogging Dilemma: When Virtual Visitors Become Real

Is it a dilemma or is it not, when virtual visitors to your blog become real visitors to your life?

It depends. It depends on the intention of your blog and it depends on the visitor. It is not a dilemma when you want to sell something or rent something. And it is also not a dilemma when someone who became a "blogging friend" after a while of emailing back and forward agrees with you to meet in real life.

Yesterday, Angelo sent me an email saying an American couple stopped by and asked if they can see the house. They "knew" it via my blog. He showed them around and they said they will leave a comment on my blog about that visit.

So what would you say? How would you feel, while sitting thousands of miles away?

I can't blame Angelo, he is just proud of showing his work to someone who is interested. Not many visitors in Pizzo anyway at that time of the year. He is open minded and not chicken-hearted like me. And we have not yet had the situation that someone totally stranger would ask permission to have a sneak peak inside.

Then of course, this question suggests itself : "what is the point of blogging about all this ?"

The best thing of blogging about our renovation is, that we are getting some fantastic feedback and valuable input from readers who are interior designer, architects or interested, creative people with great taste and ideas like some family members and friends. Also family and friends are kept updated that way, as the renovation takes ages. Another very important aspect of keeping this blog alive is, that this blog helps us to document the whole work process and to get the best photos, manufacturers, inspirations etc. filed with tags.

My Italian family is very open about my blog. However, my German family does shake their heads about it: What if some crazy guy gets jealous and burns the house down? - While this is a bit exaggerated, a crazy guy might not look up the Internet for potential houses to burn down and travel far ... it might be a neighbour, however, looking for an opportunity to sue us for something.

That's why I am very wary and careful myself. And shy. I have only one blurred picture of myself, no pictures of my son, one picture of my husband from behind and very few from my Italian in-laws. Most personal pictures are from Angelo as he seems okay with seeing his picture and name in cyber space. Actually, I think, he even enjoys it. However, I am very discreet. Very selective with pictures. Very thoughtful with words, information, names and other details. (Did you realize, I did not mention from which US city these visitors came from?)

Of course, Angelo and CC cannot understand that I make all this thinking about this little incident (virtual visitors to my blog becoming real visitors).

So I asked Angelo to handle the next tourists who show up and request a tour of the house, to show them our semiinterrato, the beautiful basement and garden that will be available for rent one day. The upper parts, although not decorated yet, are private. I hope everyone understands and respects my protective reaction. Maybe just in time, before our house becomes a tourist attraction ...