Whew…  Okay, so I piled a bit too much on my plate and almost burned myself out for a minute there. n_n

I jumped into the Hatoful Boyfriend guide without being finished with the other overhauls I had planned for the site, and those efforts in conjunction with the daily work I put towards my Kawaii Shopping and Finer Fashion Shopper blogs as well had me feeling so overwhelmed, I could barely accomplish anything at all!

So I’m slowing down for a bit.  Hatoful Boyfriend posts are going to be put on hold until I finish posting all of my completed pony plushes, which I’ve gotten reeeeeaaally far behind on.  There are THIRTEEN more ponies I’ve finished since I last updated!  So I’ll be spending the next day or so putting my photos of them together in neat little images and uploaded straight into the gallery that’s on this page (also on DeviantArt).

Then I’ll hurry along through Shuu’s path in Hatoful Boyfriend and get those posts up in the coming days after that!  Ideally, we’ll have the Hatoful Boyfriend posts finished with before this week is up.

And THENNNN I’ll get back to work on the other projects I’ve mentioned here and there in my posts.  The book about sewing cute plushes and things will be resumed, as well as the packages of downloadable items such as icons and wallpapers.  I still have a lot of irons in the fire, but I need to keep reminding myself not to try to accomplish them all at the same time!  Doing so leads only to exhaustion and disappointment when I inevitably don’t accomplish the far-too-many things that are on my to-do list.

So keep an eye on the Pony Plush Commissions page for the newest ponies!  After that will come all of the other fun stuff I just mentioned. c:

Hey everyone! 😀

I know I haven’t been blogging here as much as I keep saying I’d like to, but I have a reason! I have so many cool ideas planned for this site this year, and they’re all being worked on EVERY DAY! We’re still only just getting started in 2012 and I can’t wait to see what kinds of other developments occur through this year, besides the neat things I have planned~

Here’s something exciting: What with January ending and February beginning, payments and checks have all been sent out by all the online affiliate networks I’ve joined and made a secondary income out of. And while I first started getting tiny trickles of payments in November (I started affiliate marketing in October), this past January marks an important landmark: I made my first $100 entirely from commission-based revenue!!

Now, I read up a lot about affiliate marketing before and as I first started monetizing my Web site and blogs. And so many of them stated that your first goal to work toward is that first $100. That first $100 is your sign that you’ve done it – you’ve got a blog with traffic coming in to it, some regular readers, and now it’s just a matter of keeping it going with more products and promotions, and soon you’ll have another $100, then $500, and even $1000 is an eventual certainty as long as you keep at it – and those higher numbers are so much easier to attain now that that uphill climb towards your first $100 is reached.

If you’re a little confused and find yourself asking, “Wait, what’s affiliate marketing? What blogs are we talking about?” that’s okay! I’ll give you some quick background info. There are a toooooon of informative articles you can read about affiliate marketing itself so I won’t go hugely into it here, but basically affiliate marketing is advertising products and linking to them using a code that is unique to you. When someone else clicks that link and looks at that product, or any other products from that site you linked them to, there’s a cookie there that remembers that YOUR LINK is the one that led them there. If they purchase something, a percentage of that sale gets paid to you! You can basically think of affiliate marketing as getting paid by commission to advertise products. The two blogs I have monetized to specifically work as affiliate blogs are both on Tumblr – Kawaii Shopping and The Finer Fashion Shopper.

And here’s the very best part – my sales in January were so good, I actually reached WAY over $100! My total cumulative earnings from all of my affiliate programs across these few months actually totals to closer to $200! Remember how I mentioned I first started getting payments in November? My first paycheck (it was from my favorite affiliate program so far, LinkShare!) was for only $34. And I’d previously received a $50 payment for referring someone to use my Web hosting provider, Hostgator. I was already at $84! So close to $100 after only one month of affiliate marketing!

My sales seemed to decline in December, and I barely made any sales. I think I stayed teetering at that $80-90 range that month. But that was fine, as the holidays were very busy and I didn’t have a huge amount of time to dedicate to my blogs. When January came around, I became aware of something I had seriously neglected to address – I hadn’t implemented any SEO techniques to my two Tumblr blogs! Was it even possible to optimize Tumblr blogs for search engines? All I had to do was Google “Tumblr SEO tips” and there were my answers! I’m thankful I’m already so familiar with HTML and a small bit of the SEO I’d worked on for my own personal site (the one you’re reading from right now!), because that knowledge made it easy to implement H1 headers and turn post tags into meta keywords, and those kinds of things.

Well, immediately after implementing those SEO techniques, I witnessed a significant spike in the traffic my blogs were getting, which in turn led to a DRASTIC increase in clicks through to all of the products I was promoting there. My sales through LinkShare jumped from $20 that month to nearly $40, and then finally reached $50 right before January ended. Holy cow! From that program alone, I’d MORE than reached my first $100 earned online!! 😯 And as if that weren’t enough, on the very last day of January, I received a surprise e-mail from Amazon Associates stating that my payment for the month had been processed. Since I haven’t promoted products from Amazon as much as I have from other sites, I’d nearly forgotten all about them! When I logged into my Amazon Associates panel, I was beyond ecstatic to find that I’d accumulated $55 in sales there – all from links I’d created back in November. The SEO techniques I’d only implemented in January had even brought traffic to some of my much older posts!

So those two payments from LinkShare and Amazon alone would have gotten me to my $100 goal, but don’t forget that I had nearly reached $100 beforehand! I absolutely owe this spike of success to search engine optimization. If this past month’s increase of traffic and sales are a reliable indicator, it isn’t unreasonable to anticipate making at least $100 a month from these blogs, regularly. And if traffic and sales continue to increase, well then… I am certainly incredibly hopeful for the future! And what’s even more – I also spent some time in January joining even more affiliate programs! I also have tricklings of earnings from Share-A-Sale and Google Affiliate Network, and I’m hopeful that those will blossom into larger earnings in the coming months, just like LinkShare and Amazon Associates did after only a few months. c:

I can’t complain at all about my experience with affiliate marketing and encourage others to use their blogs for the same. If you want to get started just like I did, join LinkShare and search through their categories of merchants to find some online retailers that fit your niche. Other programs to check out are Share-A-Sale, Amazon Associates, and Google Affiliate Network.

In the future I might post a bit about the techniques I use and precise strategies that I implement in each of my Tumblr blogs when I make posts about products. c:

Thanks for reading!

January 5, 2012

Hello once again, all of you lovely persons!! I hope that all of you had fantastic holidays and a wonderful New Year, and haven’t broken any resolutions yet!

I posted a small announcement on my commission page that I was going to be on break for a couple of weeks there, and had every intention of writing a full blog post announcing my absence as well, but then an INCREDIBLY-POORLY-TIMED INCIDENT OCCURRED: the charger for my laptop shorted out and so I had no power and could not access anything. D8 So, I am terribly and deeply sorry if anyone tried to contact me and I could not get back to you.

Right now, however, it’s time to go through all of my messages and comments and get back to everyone!! And then it’s back to work on sewing up everyone’s ponies!!

FURTHERMORE, what with it being a new year and all, it’s time to pave a new path for myself and really offer some substantial things to this blog. I know I keep talking and talking about this Boutique idea of mine, and it was my resolution last year to get it going. I still wanna do that, but we’ll likely see some other immediate things I can offer here before then. c: I’m thinking of downloadable packages of icons and desktop themes, some with licenses included so you can use the graphics in your own design endeavors – Web design of your own, independent games, and the like.

Would you believe that I intend to publish a book soon, too?? I’ll self-publish a physical copy through Lulu but also have a downloadable PDF ebook available on this site (cheaper alternative). It will be on the subject of sewing cute, tiny things.

Other thing I need to do on this site: post the photos of finished ponies that I’ve already submitted to DeviantArt.

*cracks knuckles*

August 31, 2011

Holy cow! I did not expect such a MASSIVE reaction from everyone on that Lolita post!

You are all so beautiful and wonderful! ;~; I tried to thank everyone individually who commented and gave me such awesome feedback and encouragement. <3

But I also just now put this quick gif together. This is a shout-out to all of the beautiful people reading this blog right now!

I couldn’t be any happier. 8D

Soooooooooo anyway, just thought I’d fill everyone in on what my next plans are for this blog. <3  I am RAPIDLY filling up the shopping pages for the Boutique portion of the site. Hopefully I can open it soon! I know I keep saying that, but it’s because I really do get a little bit closer every day. XD

Fashion posts seem to be a big hit, so I’d like to share some more outfits and coordinates and stuff. There are a couple of category links on the Home page that still lead to 404 pages because there aren’t any posts in that category oAo So, I’ve got to get to work on those. Fashion posts it is!

Also, cartoons! I have not even touched on this blog about how much I love cartoons and toys. With My Little Pony Friendship is Magic’s second season just around the corner, I want to highlight some of my favorite episodes and toys that have been released so far. 😀 ALSO I have just gotten into the new Thundercats cartoon and want to review it briefly. Maybe I’ll do that one tomorrow. Yeah. We’ll see a Thundercats post tomorrow. BD

ALSOOO fajsldkalf did you guys know that Natsume is releasing two Harvest Moon games in mid-September, within a week apart from one another? O_O The first is Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns, which I’ve been greatly looking forward to because it looks sooooo pretty and has some seriously cute characters. 😀 The announced release date is September 20 but the guy at Gamestop said they’d have it on the 21st (this seems to be normal for HM games).

The other game is Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny on the Wii. I loved Rune Factory Frontier to bits and I’m a huge fan of the RF series. I might have to skip on this one since I don’t really have the funds to spend on a big game like this, nor the time to sit down and immerse myself in a console game, but I want to keep my eye on it anyway just because I adore the series so much. It ALSO has some pretty rad characters, and the game world is gorgeous. <3 Tides of Destiny’s release date is Sept 27 (which probably means Sept 28).

Hummmmm I think that’s about all the updates I can think of for now. o3o Yeah. Will talk about Thundercats tomorrow and after that I’ll work on filling out all of this blog’s category tags so there won’t be any more 404 errors. Woo!

Btw I totally meant it when I said you all were beautiful. 😀 I could never properly express how much I appreciate you awesome readers. ; 3;~ HUGS AND KISSES FOREVERRRRRR

August 28, 2011

I’m so happy! 😀 A few months ago, I treated myself to my first Lolita purchase. <3  As I waited, I sewed my first garments to go along with it. <3  And now, finally, I’m taking the first little baby steps toward living my princessy life~

‘Scuse me while I block out my messy room with crayon hearts. XD ((Brush credit goes to Colors Everywhere by Ronjark.))
I tried to make the outfit replicate the gif I made those months ago:

Do you think I succeeded? XD  (Don’t answer that lul.  The color is off and I exaggerated the poof in the drawing. <3)

I’m still in the process of wrapping my head around the fact that this is mine. ;~; I feel like I am just looking at someone else’s photos on the Internet. If this were Tumblr I would like the pic and just keep scrolling, pining away in my heart for those clothes to someday be mine. But they ARE mine! oAo THIS IS AMAZING.

Let’s show some details of the outfit from head to toe~

My tiara from Claire’s and huge flowery headband from Charlotte Russe are tough to wear at the same time. XD
Here’s the super pretty details at the neckline:

That picture didn’t really need hearts but I put them there anyway. XD
The lower half:

I am pleased with the poof my petticoat is providing, but I am blown away by the potential volume of this skirt!! I am definitely making a second petticoat out of twice the material I used the first time. More layers and more ruffles, I say! MORE! There’s plenty of room under this skirt, let’s fill it up! 8U

Can I talk about how in love I am with these socks? I know that silly colorful ponies don’t exactly coordinate with the more elegant dress, but I just fell in love with the fantasy pony theme of these socks and couldn’t not get them. Also these are officially the whitest socks that I own and I’m terrified of wearing them casually because they are doomed to turn dingy grey just like all of my other once-white socks. ;A;

As for the shoes – I’m sure I measured my feet accurately, and correctly converted the measurement into centimeters, but they are really big on me! There is a lot of space between the criss-crossing straps and the top of my foot. Oh, they’re not so big that they’re impossible or uncomfortable to wear. I’m going to put some arch supports or something in them to fill up the empty space a bit as well as simultaneously put some cushioning in there. n_n I’m actually glad for the extra room because it means I can wear thicker socks, or layer stockings + socks when it’s cold in the Winter.

Adorable shoes like these are what I always think of as one of the important staples of Sweet Lolita fashion, and like the outfit as a whole I still can’t believe that I actually own something this cute!! oAo My mind is totally blown!

I attempted that perspective shot that everyone else seems to do. XD How do you guys manage to do those without falling over?! There is so much poof in the way you can’t even see your feet without bending way over. oAo (Lol I <3 my throw rug.)

I thought I was done taking pictures, but then I sat down at my laptop and my skirt tried to eat the keyboard, which left me giggling so much I snapped a shot of that, too:

(Didn’t even notice Vivi was in this shot until I was editing it on my computer. XD)

I pretty much spent the whole day marveling at the ruffles and the poof and the omg. Sitting down with the skirt out around you… It’s like miles and miles of ruffles stretching out forever and ever on all sides.

This must be what happiness looks like. <3