Lioness in Japan

One of the things that I occasionally get my mitts on is freelance work for a certain music label back in Singapore. I’m always happy to get out of my web chick routine and be a live-in-the-flesh journalist.

About a month ago, Welsh singer Duffy came to town and I made my way down to Ebisu’s Liquid Room for her hour-long performance. It was just a showcase, meaning it wasn’t a full-on concert. To be honest, I wasn’t overly enthused about Duffy’s slow, soulful ballads but I was pleasantly surprised that her live act got jiving and grooving most of the time.

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I’ve been wanting to change the design of Discover Supplements because the layout was not conducive for advertising. The old version had an inflexible single column sidebar that made space an absolute nightmare. But in terms of the look and feel, I think the previous one was more slick.

Before

After

My new website, however, has more “meaning” in its pictures. I learned that in branding and design, you should try to relate your content to your overall look, so in the rotating header image, I’ve got “healthy” and “nutritious” pictures. With my recent retrenchment, I feel the need to be more driven on my own and I want to improve what I’m doing.

I just put up a new poll on my blog shop, Beauty Box, and I thought a double plug on LIJ would do no harm. Instead of second guessing what the real demand is like, a friend who is savvy in marketing strategies suggested I cast my net out and ask my customers directly:

Thanks for taking the time to participate in my little survey!

Just a small announcement to say my blog was asked to join Gen-Y career blog network Brazen Careerist. I was very surprised and honoured to be invited to be part of this community.

A year ago, I stumbled upon Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog and have been following her posts since. I find her advice and personal stories inspiring and she’s always offering alternative perspectives on any given issue. Through her blog, I came across Employee Evolution, which has a huge range of insightful Gen-Y career-related articles written by Ryan Healy and Ryan Paugh (who is one of the co-founders of Brazen Careerist). I guess when I flew solo, I needed some guidance and these are a couple of the many blogs I follow to help me carve my own path on the Internet.

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This is a question I get asked a lot when I talk about my blogs. Most people find it very curious that the topics that I write are so diverse. “Class action lawsuits?” they wonder — it’s incredulous that a chit of a girl from Singapore would know anything about this American phenomenon.

Even more challenging to tackle would be, “You’ve never been divorced, so how could you write about divorce advice?”

It’s a topic that has been burning in my mind for a while and I may shoot myself in the foot for threading on such a contentious subject. But hear me out on what I have to say.

It’s true, I’ve never had any legal training nor have I been through a divorce, and further, I’m not a nutritionist by training, so how could I have the audacity to write about dietary supplements and their benefits?

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I’ve only been let go once before and it was at my first job at a fashion/interior design magazine. The boutique publishing house (it had only one magazine) collapsed after its second issue, after which the German owner did a runner on all the bills he had to pay. Although I wasn’t paid for my last month there, I found a job a week after my last day at work.

A lot of the bad feelings I harboured happened mostly in the lead up to the official announcement that it was all over. Projects and articles were stalled because of financial problems, which of course angered industry associates and rumours burned our ears. This made marching along extremely difficult and we spent a lot of our time smoking and brooding in the dingy staircase outside the office.

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Due to too much excitement, I have to admit I was way too hasty in setting up BEAUTY BOX, v.01 — the design was too common and the URL far from satisfactory.

When I get an idea for a website, I just shoot it out, which is a terrible weakness. With four blogs behind me, I learned you need to refine it again and again.

I’m feeling quite positive about this new venture as an on-going thing so why not do it a little better?

BEAUTY BOX

Sorry for the long absence in “life” posts but this is what I’ve been living and breathing these past couple of weeks.

As promised, I’ve uploaded most of my products so here is the link to BEAUTY BOX, http://www.astrorainfall.wordpress.com, so please help me spread the word!

I’ll give you a summary of how I started this little online beauty biz:

As you know, I’ve been let go of my full-time job in Tokyo, but being the web chick that I am, I decided to do something online so I can monitor it wherever I am (and wherever I may move to).

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I know I’ve been missing for a long time but so many things are happening after my Bali trip and I’m struggling to keep up with my websites for now. The kangaroo’s mum is flying in tomorrow so we would be sightseeing for the next few days. Also, I’ve got two chapters of Japanese homework to tackle before her arrival as there will be zero time to get it done.

Just a sneak peak at what I am working on:

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For a long time, I have been wondering why my readers would email me directly rather than leave a reply in the comments box. I figured whatever they wanted to say was deemed private to them, so I didn’t ponder on this at all.

As the months crept by, my traffic numbers increased to a healthy figure but there was still dead silence in my blogs. I started to fret about the quality of my content and felt like I was shouting into a vacuum on the Internet. Admittedly, my motivation faltered sometimes.

Then one day, my close gal pal ambien told me she couldn’t leave comments on my blog. “WHAT?!” Yes, she informed me that only WordPress account holders were able to log in and leave a response. Of all things to overlook! So over the weekend, I tweaked the settings on all my websites, Discover Supplements, Get Divorce Advice, and Class Action Finder.

But, Lioness in Japan was still a mess. After whining to the kangaroo, he assured me he would look at it, but with our housewarming on Saturday and recovery on Sunday, we got nothing done. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I went through the php script in my Supplements website and compared it to the one for my Lioness blog.

Several crucial lessons learned: Don’t whine, just hunt for a solution first, even if it takes a few days; there is nothing too complicated in building a website even for a techno-phobe like me. To those who are afraid to set up a blog of their own — don’t be afraid, if I can do it, so can you.

So feel free to send me a note or leave a comment here, I would love for my space to be somewhere people can express themselves. Apologies if my websites looked unfriendly and unapproachable before but it was all a technical oversight on my part.

Thanks for visiting and I would love to hear from you!