Problogger takes #1 rank in Ratified Australia

When Ratified Australia started, one of the things that amazed me was to see Lifehack holding the #1 spot in our list. Lifehack's Feedburner subscriber base was something that most of us can only dream of.

After updating the Ratified ranking prior to this post, I was not surprised to see ProBlogger and Digital Photography School finally taking the #1 and #2 spot in Ratified. The Problogger.net's birthday celebration that gave away lots of prizes has surely contributed to the shoot up of Darren's fresh link love and growth in its Feedburner subscriber base.

For the Digital Photography School, the only campaign that I saw so far was the flyer that was distributed in Facebook (and which I passed on as well I think), I'm not sure if that was the sole factor that contributed to the growth of the site's Feedburner subscriber base.

Regardless, Darren has indeed shown us ways in tapping our existing networks to create a far more stronger community for our blog. Congratulations Darren!

Getting the kids settled in Adelaide

Last Saturday, the family arrived in Adelaide with all excitement especially upon seeing our home. The first order of business is to get the kids to school at Seaton Park Primary School and Findon High School. They youngest already started last Tuesday while the 3 in high school will start tomorrow.

From a foreigner's perspective, here are some observations:

• The school personnel are very friendly.
  
• It is a weird feeling when no one asks you to pay a fee upfront.
• Great to have your kids enter school even if it is already in the middle of the year.
• There are hardly any basketball court and they now have to catch up learning soccer.
• It is different when you don't have helpers at home as you are struggling to have enough time to do some serious blogging work.

I'm gradually picking up on sites to include in Ratified Australia and some I have made a blog post in relation to it. This includes:

• Phone call works best in response to "When to use e-mail and when not to".
• Lessons learned in launching and operating a membership-only site inspired by Yaro Starak's article series on membership-only site build-up.

I haven't really shared that much personal stuff in my blogs before. However, after getting to read through Karen Cheng's blog, I think I can also do it.