Paypal has been doing this kind of thing for a while. I don’t know how much it saves exactly. But because of poor international currency availability, my payment currency (NTD) is always overcharged. I know this from checking out the off-island exchange rates. I ALWAYS exchange locally. But price gouging is a way of life online through these methods.
Apple vs PC
For me, the priority in computing is perhaps familiarity, reliability, repairability and expandability.
So I have several PCs at home/work. If one breaks, I can get it repaired in my local shop pronto. All parts can be replaced. They’ll even replace or reinstall Windows for me. Apple can’t do that so fast.
With Apple, I’d need to have an extra machine lying around just in case it was away for several weeks or longer. For Win notebooks, this is more of an issue as well, but my current notebook is now out of warranty, so the PC store can maintain it without returning it to the store. Last time I updated the HD to an SSD, the PC store just handed me the drive from inside! New casing and it was good to go as an external. No fuss, no muss, and no reformatted drive! Like I said, I don’t think Apple can beat that for service.
All machines have reliability issues, some more than others. This is not unique to PC. But the machines I have run pretty smoothly most of the time. I know how to keep them running, and truthfully, Win 10 is a vast improvement in that respect over Win7/8.1/XP so much so that I’m quite happy to keep using it. When I run into software issues with Win 10, I typically can get it resolved myself… and I’m not a whiz by any means.
But for me, familiarity is probably the biggest advantage for staying in the Windows ecosystem. I know how it works, I know how to transition from one version to another because of the familiar approaches. Though Win8 was a dawg! I still don’t like that version. I think I could probably learn how to use a Mac interface, but seriously I don’t see any real need. Overall, I prefer the Windows experience because I can get things done quickly… I am sure many tasks would be just as quick on a Mac, though.
I also have an IPAD, my 2nd one. And I like that… though perhaps not as thrilling as the first one. The software on IPAD has improved immensely since version 5. But it is still a walled garden, and I find that frustrating at times. Things that should be easy to do aren’t. Or they’re impossible. Or Apple makes me run circles trying to do something. And the file manager is truly, truly pitiful even on IPADOS 14.x. Painful. Still I understand the paradigm is different. But it frustrates me endlessly.
As a result of owning an IPAD, I probably would never buy an Iphone. I have had three Androids and I find their philosophy and open design more useful to me. But I would never buy an Iphone: it tries to do in software a lot of things that should perhaps be left to hardware – like extra storage or a 2nd sim card. After wrangling with software niggles time & again, I can only say that I prefer hardware solutions because they tend to be more reliable for me. So give me an SD card slot so I can read my pictures onto my PC or pad… don’t make me connect wirelessly (it’s unreliable); give me an extra SIM card slot for a 2nd number; give me an onboard SD card on my phone so I can store more pix, don’t force me to upgrade at the huge Apple upsell price as well.
But I get it. Some people feel more comfortable using a Mac or IOS device. That’s their choice. For me, though… PC Yes. Android Yes. Ipad Pro Maybe or Yes. Mac Maybe. Iphone NO.
So I have several PCs at home/work. If one breaks, I can get it repaired in my local shop pronto. All parts can be replaced. They’ll even replace or reinstall Windows for me. Apple can’t do that so fast.
With Apple, I’d need to have an extra machine lying around just in case it was away for several weeks or longer. For Win notebooks, this is more of an issue as well, but my current notebook is now out of warranty, so the PC store can maintain it without returning it to the store. Last time I updated the HD to an SSD, the PC store just handed me the drive from inside! New casing and it was good to go as an external. No fuss, no muss, and no reformatted drive! Like I said, I don’t think Apple can beat that for service.
All machines have reliability issues, some more than others. This is not unique to PC. But the machines I have run pretty smoothly most of the time. I know how to keep them running, and truthfully, Win 10 is a vast improvement in that respect over Win7/8.1/XP so much so that I’m quite happy to keep using it. When I run into software issues with Win 10, I typically can get it resolved myself… and I’m not a whiz by any means.
But for me, familiarity is probably the biggest advantage for staying in the Windows ecosystem. I know how it works, I know how to transition from one version to another because of the familiar approaches. Though Win8 was a dawg! I still don’t like that version. I think I could probably learn how to use a Mac interface, but seriously I don’t see any real need. Overall, I prefer the Windows experience because I can get things done quickly… I am sure many tasks would be just as quick on a Mac, though.
I also have an IPAD, my 2nd one. And I like that… though perhaps not as thrilling as the first one. The software on IPAD has improved immensely since version 5. But it is still a walled garden, and I find that frustrating at times. Things that should be easy to do aren’t. Or they’re impossible. Or Apple makes me run circles trying to do something. And the file manager is truly, truly pitiful even on IPADOS 14.x. Painful. Still I understand the paradigm is different. But it frustrates me endlessly.
As a result of owning an IPAD, I probably would never buy an Iphone. I have had three Androids and I find their philosophy and open design more useful to me. But I would never buy an Iphone: it tries to do in software a lot of things that should perhaps be left to hardware – like extra storage or a 2nd sim card. After wrangling with software niggles time & again, I can only say that I prefer hardware solutions because they tend to be more reliable for me. So give me an SD card slot so I can read my pictures onto my PC or pad… don’t make me connect wirelessly (it’s unreliable); give me an extra SIM card slot for a 2nd number; give me an onboard SD card on my phone so I can store more pix, don’t force me to upgrade at the huge Apple upsell price as well.
But I get it. Some people feel more comfortable using a Mac or IOS device. That’s their choice. For me, though… PC Yes. Android Yes. Ipad Pro Maybe or Yes. Mac Maybe. Iphone NO.
Site Revival Goes On: March 2020 Update
It’s time for my update website revival. A quieter month! 😀 Sorry but with that COVID thing, I got a bit preoccupied.
Traffic
Traffic dropped since February a little bit because the big boost in January finally ended. But it has held steady at just under 9K pgs for the month. I’ve not added much content in February, but finally finished adding pictures to every post, keywording everything and ensuring that RankMath scores ended up between 80~100 for each page.
Income
March’s income benefitted from the swoon that accompanied Amazon being offset by the income from Ezoic as it settled into place: $46.69. Plus Amazon: $19.54. No other income so that’s a grand tall of… $66.14! Up from February by the grand sum of about 30% ~ Well, we celebrate the small victories!
Content
I only added two new pages but I worked ferociously on the other pages, adding content, updating text, tidying things up, and republishing older content.
Thieves
I also finally began to get to grips with content thieves, so I’ve been collating a lot of information about several in particular who stole my content. One particular egregious site ripped off half a dozen pages. I’ll be launching about a few DMCAs to Google, and maybe to their hosting companies sometime in April.
Updates
I made a few other changes to the site, including nixing unnecessary plugins. I also swapped out my previous caching solution for WPRocket. So tweaking that has been a regular challenge, along with Ezoic and the CDN. I’m now debating: using Ezoic caching $20pm, upgrading the server to hosted WP $20pm, choosing RocketCache, or just bearing with the current setup. Don’t know. I’d still like to see superfast loading times… so I’m still working on removing over 1/2 my plugins.
Goals
Still aiming for 12K pvs and $100pm. In April, I’ll be adding 3 or 4 (maybe more) new pages of content which are already written up; getting the better of my content foes; and looking at Linkwhisper to make sure my pages are adequately linked up. I found six or seven pages with literally no incoming links. I think Linkwhisper could help sort out those.
April weirdly is looking better than March at this point in time, but the news from Ezoic (lower ad revenues in the industry) and Amazon’s slashing rates to between 1%~3% portend a dour May. We’ll see. But I figured in the end that it didn’t matter what Amazon did… If I had an audience, someone would be happy to pay to reach them. So it makes sense: build the audience/tribe/fans for your site. Don’t worry about the monetization too much at the moment.
Running an online business like this means wearing a lot of hats, and sometimes when you’re busy distracted, some of them can fall off! It’s not ideal. But what you gonna do!