"I just realized something, Uncle Ricky. You're a nerd."

That's what my 19-year old niece, Jamie, said to me yesterday when I was explaining some computer stuff to my 42-year old little sister, Tammie — her mother. Resisting the urge to choke the life out of her for calling me Ricky (a nickname for Richard that I've always hated), I corrected her to tell her that I was a geek, not a nerd; specifically, a computer geek. Nowadays, however, geek and nerd have come to mean pretty much the same thing.

I really am a Geek!

According to the some of the geek definitions listed at Wikipedia, a geek is:

• A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and new media. Most geeks are adept with computers, and treat the term hacker as a term of respect, but not all are hackers themselves.
• A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.
• A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. This could be due to the intensity, depth, or subject of their interest. This definition is very broad but because many of these interests have mainstream endorsement and acceptance, the inclusion of some genres as "geeky" is heavily debated. Persons have been labeled as or chosen to identify as mathematics geeks, engineering geeks, sci-fi geeks, computer geeks, various science geeks, movie and film geeks (cinephile), comic book geeks, theater geeks, history geeks, gamer geeks, music geeks, art geeks, philosophy geeks, literature geeks, and roleplay geeks.
• And more.

In this decade, geeks wear the term as a badge of honor instead of avoiding the previously negative connotations that came with the words "nerd" and "geek". While I agree with some of the definitions, I can't completely identify with all of them.

Geek Fishing

My niece is into hand-drawn art. She does it on paper and then scans it and uploads it to the computer. I told her she may not be a computer geek, but that she's definitely an art geek. I didn't count, but she has to have at least a couple of hundred drawings stored at deviantART. Don't ask me which account, because I didn't look at the name. It doesn't matter anyway because she's moving them to her own, brand-spanking new blog at Blogger (blogspot.com).

Jamie was trying to sell her art at deviantART, but isn't selling anything at all. Her talent is improving as the years pass, but she still can't contend with those with professional artist software and better supplies. She decided to pick my brain and learn how to make money online by using a blog, fishing for as much information as possible.

Proper References

While I'm familiar with blogging and blogs of different kinds, as well as Google AdSense, I'm not familiar with the Blogger platform. I've never worked with the different templates, layouts and inserting any kind of ads.

In order to give her the best sources, I started her off with the best source I knew of for Blogger blogs and how to make money with them: Make Money Online For Beginners.

Grizzly knows how to optimize Blogger blogs and make money online with them. I told Jamie to concentrate on getting 10 or more blog posts in place and set up her blog properly by reading everything on his site. When it's a month old, I told her to put the AdSense ads into place and to read Adsense For Beginners, as well as everything else on Grizzly's blog about it.

And Finally!

I told Jamie not to list her blogs with any search engines and explained about sandboxes and such. She understood. I will check her blog periodically and see if I can find things wrong with it and then do a full blog review with my new "Blog & Article Reviews" blog around May 1st.

This is all I can do for her. I'll be too far away (the Philippines in fact) to give her more "hands-on" assistance by this time next week.

[Update March 2009: It looks like blogging didn't turn out to be her "thing". She gave up after 4 posts in March and April of last year.]

• Thoughts on Blog Hosting, Self-Hosted and Otherwise
• The Road to Success is Paved with Stones of Failure
• Breaking The Blogging Monotony
• Off The Net
• But I don't WANT a job!