My blog this year won so many awards, that I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count them! NOT!! (Didn’t I sound cheesy and dorky like the rest of the bloggers out there?) But yes, my blog won a lot of invisible mind boggling awards. I won people’s readerships. That’s the biggest award I can get as a blogger. I don’t care about best blog, or best writer, or best anything. Who cares? It’s like winning a virtual banner to advertise someone else’s bright idea that started the campaign.

Really, if the prize was money based, then people will be all over it! I would be so all over it!

So, I am gonna list the top blog posts this year by comments, my favorites, and ones that I should have never published, but found their way online cause of my insomnia or excessive amounts of coffee!

Top Blog Posts 2009 | Comments & Reactions

1. April 28, 2009 | It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a conspiracy theory!
2. June 7, 2009 | The Arab Blogorette
3. June 16, 2009 | I think it is time for change!
4. August 25, 2009 | Why are Muslims turning Atheists?
5. August 30, 2009 | Analysis: It is much harder to get rid of her
6. September 7, 2009 | Arabs marrying non-Arabs
7. September 18, 2009 | Window shopping for a bride
8. October 27, 2009 | Symbols of being different

Top Blog Posts 2009 | Monaism & Love

1. January 15, 2009 | Are good people always the victims of life?
2. March 31, 2009 | How accurate is this?
3. April 20, 2009 | Airports think I am a perv!
4. May 21, 2009 | A way to relieve stress
5. July 15, 2009 | Teaching a child the basics of the internet world
6. September 6, 2009 | No Comment
7. September 24, 2009 | I am sick and tired of looking for work!!! NO MORE!
8. December 4, 2009 | The typicals
9. December 26, 2009 | I am the master of my choices

Top Blog Pots 2009 | Those That Should Have Never Been

1. January 28, 2009 | The blogging world is run by monkeys
2. May 4, 2009 | I thought I held the title of taking things too seriously
3. June 20, 2009 | The media has been following me for over two decades
4. September 26, 2009 | I don’t like talking about sex in public

Awakening Records is pleased to announce the release of the world’s first animated peace music video on Palestine. Palestine will be Free’ is performed by Awakening’s latest music sensation – Maher Zain.

This is the first time an animated peace music video has been produced on Palestine: “We are recognised as pioneers and constantly pushing the bounds of creativity and innovation. This animated music video for our new star artist Maher Zain is just another step in that direction and certainly not the last”, said Bara Kherigi, Director of Awakening Records. Destined to be an international success, the video features the story of a young brave Palestinian girl who never loses hope for a better future despite the harsh realities surrounding her.

[source]

How to get a personal blog started

1. Choose an overall theme to your site. I know it is personal, but you have to have some type of focus point to your site. For example, I am known to write very direct and to the point posts. I don’t sugar coat anything, and I chose the idea of rebellious as a way to represent my ideas to the world. Quick and dirty, but to the point, because that’s who I am. So, ask your self these questions:
   1. What do I want to represent to the world? A reiteration of what happened in my daily life or journal of thoughts that lead to discussions about certain issues related to my daily life?
   2. What writing style should I follow? Should it be complex or simple?
   3. Who are my main target audience?
   4. Should I stay focused to one idea all the time, or be unpredictable every day and bring something new to my audience?
2. Should you start a blog from scratch? Scratch means the following:
   1. Buy your own domain name. I prefer this route, because you want your web presence to be unique online. It’s like your name. You are a unique person, so why not have a unique name online?
   2. Install a platform that you are already familiar with and practiced using. I have used WordPress.org for a long time. Before I started this blog, I already knew how to use WordPress and I have used it for other projects. My suggestion for those that are familiar with programming or web design, to test WordPress first and play around with it before committing to it. If not, get someone else to do it for you.
   3. Choose an interface style or theme. I know many people have the hardest time with this, and would rather download a free WordPress template, or buy cheap ones if they are deeply committed. However, if you spent the time buying a domain, buying hosting space every month, then why not spend a bit of time to customize your site? Make it personal. It has your name on it. You don’t want to dress like half the people out there, right?
   4. Spend time upgrading your site. There are many plugins out there that will enhance your site’s functionality.
3. Should I monetize my blog? I know many people want to make money online, especially with their blogs. It’s not that easy, and I don’t recommend you doing it from the get-go. You need to attract visitors first, and many of your visitors are not stupid. If they don’t know who you are, and they realized that your site is still new, and they see advertisements permeated all over the site, then they know you are not being sincere in your writing. You are no longer writing for your self and them, but to only make money off of them. I didn’t start putting advertisement on this blog till after 1.5 years maybe into it.

How to drive traffic and maintain a loyal audience

I know this is the hardest thing about maintaining a site. How to get audience? Is submitting your blog to search engines enough? Should commenting on several blogs just to get your name out there enough?

1. Write a lot of different things. Write anything, and everything possible. Don’t limit your self, or think that “someone” out there is watching. Everyone is watching. Stop this fear from writing and knowing people you know in person might be reading it. Who cares?
2. The more you write, the more search engines are attracted to you. Search engines’ bots love new content. The more you write on a daily bases, the more the bots will go through your site and index new content. The more differing thoughts you have, the more keywords it can pick up.
3. Join social networks.
   1. I use Entrecard on a daily bases, and it is the number one tool for me, as a personal blogger, to attract various audience, and to also see what is out there. The more you drop, limit 300 a day, the more exposure you have online to various people all over the world.
   2. I use Stumbleupon every now and then. I find it a great tool for others to help you advertise certain posts to certain categories.
   3. I use Facebook every day. I find it the most personal way to tell others, I will talk to you. I will be more personal with you, using PM, Wall posts, comments, etc. I am not just a person sitting behind a screen writing blog posts. I am like you, and I don’t mind being friends and getting to know you personally, and vice versa.
   4. I use Twitter all day long. It is the number one way to find me online, and quickly ask me a question. I try my best to answer as soon as I can. I try to write about what I am thinking, how I am feeling, and share some cool links I find online.
4. Get others to subscribe to your site. Everyone will tell you that you must have an RSS feed, and an email subscription link. I agree, however, what I really love is when people bookmark your site to their favorites, or know your link by heart. That’s when you know what you really attracted others and gained a loyal audience. You made your mark online, and people now know who you are.

How to make money from a personal blog

I honestly don’t have a definite answer. I make money because my website traffic is high, and I have great internet exposure from the several keywords or phrases from my blog posts. However, I had this site for over three years. In the beginning, I read a lot about making money online in the 1000′s of dollars, but I didn’t know how to take those tips and apply it to a personal blog. I found it to be a great challenge. So I decided to focus more on attracting people to come on a daily bases, and have fun with my blog instead. I stay interactive with my audience and show them that I am really just like them. If I end up making 1000′s of dollars from advertisements every month, then great. I know it is nearly impossible and I doubt I will ever, but we can only hope eh? Otherwise, I will do what I have always been doing, writing to tell a story about me, the world that I live in, and the way I perceive many issues in life. Then, things can keep developing from there, right?

And like the song says, “Que Sera Sera! Whatever will be, will be!”

Cheers!

[source]

First off, I have never met this lady ever in my life, and my mom recently knew her, and the lady’s daughters are much younger than me. So there was no way her daughters would know anything about me or even my name. And the girl she was talking about, that is my age, I stopped talking to her when I was 20! I was friends with her, but I didn’t like how her brothers acted and were always there surrounding her like tigers. So, why was I known then amongst the masses, even till now?

Oh I forgot, I live in mini village London, where the exponentially growing Arab population here live a life of six two degrees of separation. Once you know one, everyone else knows you!

I feel like I am in highschool all over again. People knew me and my entire life, and I had no idea who they were.

If I lived in an Arab country, I wouldn’t have to experience such a thing. Why Arabs abroad feel obligated that they MUST know everyone in their city? Even Arabs in nearby cities? Who they are/were friends with? Where they buy their shoes from?

My mom yesterday said something interesting, which I couldn’t agree more. She said, “Arabs are great, but they have one bad trait. Most of the time, they are spiteful towards each other.”

I wonder what will happen if all Arabs in this great town of mine knew my website. I swear, I will start getting hate messages through Facebook or email. Thank God I don’t add many people to my personal Facebook account, or use it much, or even put anything on Facebook that causes any form of controversy. Well, the only controversy that my Facebook profile would ever have, is that I said I am politically VERY Liberal, and I am single. Now that’s GOSSIP!

** By the way, for those of you who live in London, Canada, I apologize. London is not a mini village or town, but a great city populated with about 400,000 people. However, why does it feel like I have to say “Howdy Y’all!!” all the time?

Name on Facebook: Rebellious Mona. Can’t miss me!

Name on Twitter: @rebelliousgirl

For those who followed me on Twitter, please message me to follow you back. I am bad at it and I don’t know which are humans or bots.

Oh, by the way, lately I have been getting emails from Guys who can’t read. They send me their number (usually international number), or ask me to add them to MSN (which I don’t have). All I can say to these people, NO! Eff.

I decided to write about The Atrocities of Facebook… Let’s discuss this bad epidemic eh?

Here we go peoplez!

Am I blinded by the corrupt system this society sits on? I mean what’s the point of conforming to the needs of this society when for the most part was founded on a bunch of lies? I mean give me a break, every year to three years some university junkie creates some sort of social networking web-site that everyone gets attached to. It gets to the extent where people forget how the sun set looks like; what’s the point? Are we that desperate to find friends over such websites instead of doing it the old fashioned way; through school, functions and etc? Tell me about it. I’ve been a victim of “social networking” for over 9 years. It’s like an addiction to a drug or smoking; once you start, it’s hard for you to stop. If you don’t receive your daily dosage of it, you feel lost, shattered inside, you keep on thinking about it, not allowing yourself to go half a day without it. Once you have that daily dosage, you forget your problems, and the world surrounded by you.

What ever happened to those days in which we would play outside with the neighborhood kids, ride our bikes, and go out for ice cream??? We weren’t as stressed out, we couldn’t care less of these stupid inventions (don’t get me wrong by all means it has it’s pro’s and con’s) and we were taking our sweet ass time trying to figure out things like what measures one person needs to take in-order to live a long life. People would actually go to the library, look up journals, research papers to get their answers. Nowadays, all we have to do is go on some search engine and type in “what measures one person needs to take in-order to live a long life,” and we would fine it within a heart beat.

Don’t get me wrong, the internet is a great thing, I mean come-on, we are talking about these “average Joe’s” coming up with new software, new ideas, every other month. But one thing that pisses me off the most, is that these so called social networking websites are taking over our lives. Maybe we aren’t using it for legitimate reasons? Who knows! Nowadays, it’s seems that these websites can either make or break a person. Facebook for instance; the majority of people use their “Status” to tell their friends and random people that they add what they are doing at that very moment. “I am at Tim Horton’s on Dundas and Hurontario” what if some Hill-billy on your Facebook was actually stalking you? What would you do in a situation like that? I mean a lot of sexual assaults, people running away, being killed, occur from such social networks. MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, etc.

I was a victim of Facebook and had at one point over 900 friends, and I thought it wasn’t a big deal, the more the merrier. But when I sat back and thought of it … damn … 900 people? I mean come on. Now, I reduced to less than 500. However, those 500 people that I have on my account are people that I actually know through school, work, conventions, friends, family, blogs and so forth. However, having so many people knowing the “in’s and out’s” of a person is kind of freaky. I don’t want hundreds of people knowing what I am doing at an exact moment.

My closets friends have my number so I really don’t have to worry about using Facebook to get a hold or keep contact with them. What I’ve noticed is that these days people only worry about the quantity of friends they have instead of the quality, damn. If I had one friend who I thought highly of and respected I wouldn’t give two flying craps about 300 other people. But these days, as Mona and I have discussed a while ago, that it’s hard to find good-true friends! Even your closet friend can hurt you. Why? Because they are the one’s who know most about you.

Over the past while I’ve started to realize that I am very content with the way I feel about my self, I don’t really find the need to be accepted on Facebook. Too much social drama; relationships break up over it-(happened to me at one point), people airing out their dirty laundry, you can catch someone cheating on it (happened to me at one point), who’s dating who and etc. It’s worse than an Arabic Soap opera. That’s why I’ve given up. I used to check Facebook more than 20 times on a daily basis. Thus, for over one month I haven’t checked it on a daily basis, what’s the point? People who need me contact my phone. Also, I haven’t been feeling lazy, started back at the gym, lost more than 10 pounds, got in touch with my friends, started reading more books, etc.

So I really don’t find the need to sit on a website that is time consuming, and does not give me anything in return other than a headache. For those people who use Facebook as a tool for dating; shame on you! Go out and mingle with people, do it the old fashioned way, you could never go wrong with that. I just don’t know why society has been changing so drastically, why is it that in order to be accepted in our society we need to be a part of such chaos? I don’t know. It’s something I haven’t touched basis on as of yet.

Now you got to watch this hilarious Facebook sketch. It couldn’t be more true!

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Note: If you want to take over Mona’s blog, all you have to do is write a lot of stuff, about anything that effects everyone else, and email it to her and tell her how awesome you are.

Email it to rebelliousarabgirl@gmail.com.
In the subject write: I AM TAKING OVER YOUR BLOG! :up:

I think I will do this more often.

Peace out!