Unless you're a Filipino or have close ties to Filipinos, you probably don't have a clue what I'm talking about when I mention anything about a balikbayan box. The word "balikbayan" is actually a combination word coined in the 1970s. "Balik" means to go back and "bayan" means home town or home country. So "balikbayan" is someone going back to their home country, but it only pertains to people going back to the Philippines.

Since I'm an American living in the Philippines, I become a balikbayan when I return after a trip to the US.

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My good friend, Hari (who is not a Noble UV Minion, but still a loyal daily reader), is an accomplished web comic artist. Boxi and Panjo is one of his best creations. I thoroughly enjoy seeing each and every one he publishes and stop by his blog, "Hari's Corner", several times per week.

Hari contributed many guest posts here at Untwisted Vortex a while back, but hasn't been contributing lately and I completely understand the reasons for it. This awesome web comic is one of them.

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Online referrals from other websites and search engines are the usual ways of getting website traffic. Getting website traffic from offline sources is also possible if you associate with the people who control those sources.

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The tagline says "A Newbie's Journey to Making Money Online". With a blog less than 3 months old, newbie is a pretty good description.

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I have experimented with several social networking sites over the past few months and I've come to the conclusion that StumbleUpon is the best service to drive traffic to your blog.

This doesn't mean you should ignore the rest, but it does mean that you should make using StumbleUpon a priority. Here are some tips to using it:

• Always ask someone else to stumble a particular article and write a review of the post. Some stumblers will flag it as spam if you "thumbs up" your own post and write your own review first. They'll even go so far as to notify their friends to do the same, including a "thumbs down".
• The StumbleUpon toolbar has a feature called "Send to". I just recently figured out what it was for (silly me). Make sure you have the actual article showing in your browser and then send the page to one of your StumbleUpon friends for a thumbs up/review. In fact, I'll soon be removing the "Comment for a Stumble" link from my sidebar (along with the others in that box) because this is much quicker and just as effective (unless someone tells me otherwise).
• You want to stumble the pages your friends have stumbled as much as possible. This drives traffic to those stumbled pages. If you run out of pages, pick another category. Friends should make sure they "thumbs up" their own pages (not as the first one) so those pages are included in your friends' "queue".
• Never give a thumbs up or a review to a sponsored post. It will end up getting flagged as spam and this has a negative effect on your traffic. Miracles do happen and some sponsored posts will make it through. But why take the chance?
• When doing a review in conjunction with a stumble, add as many relevant tags as possible. This will put it in the queues for stumblers that have set it for those categories.

Are any of the tips unclear? I'll happily fix them if they are. These can't possibly be the only tips for good stumbling and good traffic results, so feel free to chime in with your own. I'll add them to the post if they're not duplicates.

I derive happiness from helping others to become more than they hope for themselves. The better I understand myself the more hearts I may touch. I am blessed by those that understand my actions and words despite some that choose to misinterpret them.

Carefully, I love those who try to prove my worthlessness, remembering that I am vulnerable, subject to the efforts of those who would try to gain power and status from misrepresenting who I am. I choose my own friends and in doing so, work to create a loving environment.

My friends allow me the pain and joy of life without interference, even if they don’t understand it. My social environment and my family are my creations and I want and accept that responsibility. Individuals who claim to understand more of my intention than I, or claim to know more of what is best for me are predators. I avoid these marauders because they attempt to steal my reality by trying to live their lives through mine or would have me live their life.

I never thought that I would meet anyone here in the Philippines that shared the same interests as I. Little did I know that the father of one of my son's college classmates is a former military service member like myself. He's Filipino, but his English is as good as mine. His wife and children speak good English as well.

Joel is going to college for a second career and will return to the US when he gets his degree in nursing. There's a huge demand for nurses of all kinds in the US and they get paid very well.

They live down the road from us, not far at all. It's amazing how close they live to us and yet we just recently talked to them for the first time (yesterday in fact). Jonathan went to his classmate's 17th birthday party. I was a little confused, so I had to ask a few questions. Normally, people graduate from high school in the US at around 18 years of age. His daughter graduated at the age of 16. So, how did she graduate at 16 in the US.? She didn't. She was a sophomore in high school (10th grade) in the US. When she arrived in the Philippines, they made her a senior in high school (4th year instead of 2nd). There are only ten grades here as opposed to twelve in the US. So… that explained how she was going to college at 16 years old after leaving the US.