In this post, you will learn how to visit or access blockchain domains in your web browser such as those ending in .crypto. Ever since the creation of blockchain technology, lots of new technologies were created or modernized using blockchain, such as the creation of NFTs or in this case, the birth of blockchain domain names.

What Are Blockchain Domain Names?

Blockchain domain names are domain names that aren't stored on a centralized server. Blockchain domain names are stored on the blockchain so the records are publicly available.

How Do I Get a Blockchain Domain Name?

Currently, the most popular site on where you can buy blockchain domain names is at UnstoppableDomains. Here's a tutorial post on how you can buy your own blockchain domain name: How to Buy a Decentralized Domain Name

Examples of Blockchain Domain Name Extensions

.crypto

.coin

.wallet

.nft

.bitcoin

.zil

.888

.x

.dao

As of now, your current browser most likely do not support the ability to visit websites that have a blockchain domain name attached to it by default; however, they do have the ability to support it with just one simple change in the settings. Don't worry, you can undo the changes if you decide to change your mind.

How To Visit Blockchain Domain Name Websites on Google Chrome

To visit blockchain domain name websites on Google Chrome, you will need to go to Google Chrome's settings page which can be accessed by clicking on the 3 dots located on the top right of your Chrome browser. Near the bottom of the menu, click on "Settings" which will open a new tab giving you access to Google Chrome's settings.

Once you are there, click on the "Security and Privacy" tab on the left hand side.

Once you have opened up the Security and Privacy page, scroll down until you are at the "Advanced" section which is located near the bottom of the page.

Next, under "Use secure DNS", select the radio button labeled as "With Custom" which has a empty text field which allows you to enter a custom provider. Inside that empty text field, type in the following url: https://resolver.unstoppable.io/dns-query

Once you've done that, it should now look like the following:

To save the changes, simply close the Settings page tab. If you wish to undo the changes, just go back to the Security and Privacy page in Settings like you did before, except this time, you can just delete the URL in the "With Custom" section, and select the "With your current service provider" option.

Now, you should be able to visit any websites with a decentralized domain name such as .crypto, .coin, etc!

NOTE - This tutorial was made using Google Chrome Version 99.0.4844.51 (Official Build) (64-bit). As long as your browser has the ability to support entering a custom DNS service provider, then you should be able to follow along still.

I Still Can't Access Blockchain Domain Name Websites

Let's say you made the changes exactly as I taught you, but you still cannot view websites with decentralized blockchain domain names. Don't worry, the solution is very easy.

To visit websites with decentralized blockchain domain names, make sure you type the url with a forward slash "/" at the end of your link.

So, for example, if I wanted to visit a website like ericliang.wallet, I would need to type it as ericliang.wallet/ in the web browser.

If for whatever reason this still doesn't work, try visiting the website in incognito mode as well as double checking in your browser's settings to make sure that the changes were saved.

Alternatively, it is possible that the person who owns that particular decentralized domain name simply doesn't have a website linked to it yet so there might not be anything to see there in the first place. After all, this is still relatively new.

With the development of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, there comes from it several innovative products aside from just NFTs. There are several things you can buy, and that includes domain names. Some people also refer to decentralized domain names as blockchain domains.

In this post, I will teach you how to buy a decentralized domain name from UnstoppableDomains.com. Don't worry, it's quicker and much simpler than the process of purchasing a traditional domain name.

What Is A Decentralized Domain Name?

A decentralized domain name is a domain name that lives on the blockchain.

What Are The Differences Between A Domain Name And A Decentralized Domain Name?

A traditional domain name is owned or controlled by a singular entity, such as a business or corporation. What this means is they can potentially take down your domain name for whatever legal reasons aka censorship.

With a decentralized domain name, you eliminate the risk of the domain name being taken down by a singular entity thanks to the benefits of blockchain technology. You have the ability to truly own that domain name. Not only that, you don't have to pay a annual fee to own the domain name!

Do You Need Crypto To Buy A Decentralized Domain Name?

You do not need cryptocurrency to buy a decentralized domain name; however, you can pay with cryptocurrency if you want to. That is completely up to you.

Where Can I Buy Decentralized Domain Names From?

There are several websites where you can go and buy a decentralized domain name from, but the one I recommend is UnstoppableDomains.com since they're the first ones who started this so they have a lot of experience, credibility, and popularity.

What Decentralized Domain Name Extensions Can I Get on UnstoppableDomains.com?

Currently, there are 10 decentralized domain name extensions you can get and they are:

• .x
• .crypto
• .coin
• .wallet
• .bitcoin
• .888
• .nft
• .dao
• .zil
• .blockchain

NOTE - Public companies and certain brand names have their decentralized domain names protected so don't get any funny ideas on trying to buy their decentralized domain names, because you can't. You'll see a shield icon in the search results for those that are protected.

How To Buy A Decentralized Domain Name On UnstoppableDomains.com?

Things you will need in order to buy a decentralized domain name on UnstoppableDomains.com include the following:

• Money (Credit Card, Cryptocurrency, PayPal, Crypto.com App)
• Decentralized Domain Name

1. Go to UnstoppableDomains.com and create an account. It's free! You just need an email address and a password. Don't forget to click on that verification link they send to your email.
2. Go to their search bar or to https://unstoppabledomains.com/search and you can start typing in the decentralized domain name that you want. You can save it to your favorites or add it to your cart. In this case, I'm assuming you want to buy a decentralized domain name so click the "Add to Cart" button.
3. Once you've done that, click on the cart icon located on the top right of the screen or if you're still on the search results page, click on "Continue to Cart".
4. Next, answer the question on whether or not you live in the USA. Enter your zip code. Then click on the "Checkout" button.
5. Lastly, choose your payment method and enter in your payment information. Once you've done that, click "Submit Payment".
6. Congratulations! You've successfully purchased a decentralized domain name on UnstoppableDomains.com. Easy, right?

It's been about 2-3 years since I transitioned from Hostgator, a popular shared hosting service, to DigitalOcean, a popular and affordable VPS hosting service. At the time, I didn't know a thing about how to deploy a website, much less any commands on a Linux-based operating system (other than rm -rf which my friend back in university would always joke about deleting the main operating system's system folder).

This post is meant for web developers. If you are someone who is non-technical, steer clear from this post, it is not meant for you but you are welcome to read it for fun.

There are a lot of hosting solutions for more advanced websites, such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Heroku, etc. However, despite knowing about these services, I chose DigitalOcean.

Why DigitalOcean makes a great first VPS hosting platform for beginners?

DigitalOcean Services Are Less Confusing To Understand

First of all, they don't obscure things too much to the point where, as a beginner, you wonder which package or component is right for you. Here's a screenshot of Amazon AWS as an example of all of their available hosting services:

As you can see, they have a lot of options to choose from for each category. Of course, for the more experienced or veteran web developer, you can easily figure it out. However, this article is targeted towards beginners.

Disclaimer - I'm not hating on any web hosting services. I think Amazon AWS is great for a certain crowd, etc.

This reminds me of an episode where Gordan Ramsey (the superstar chef) goes to certain restaurants to give their business some help. One of them had a menu filled with a lot of options for each course. This not only made more work and stress to get the old stock of food out of their fridge, but it also overwhelms the customer when it comes to choosing something to eat. The solution was to eliminate most of the items from the menu, and keep it minimal.

DigitalOcean Allows Beginners To Learn The Basics And Importance Of Linux For Web Deployment

One of the things why DigitalOcean makes a great first VPS hosting platform for beginners is it encourages web developers to learn about Linux for web deployment. Unlike Google Cloud or Amazon AWS, you don't have to use a API and add it to your code to deploy the website. With DigitalOcean, you get right into it once you created a new VPS hosting instance (aka a 'Droplet'). After that, everything you need to do is done via SSH and your preferred way to transfer your website source code to the VPS instance (e.g. Github).

Users get to install things like Apache or Nginx from scratch. Users get to figure out LetsEncrypt from scratch. Users will have to learn some basic Linux commands to navigate around and to do things in the VPS. If anything goes wrong, users always have the option to delete the entire Droplet (or restore from a backup copy of the Droplet image) and start all over again.

DigitalOcean Doesn't Need Extra API Configurations

As I mentioned before, DigitalOcean doesn't need extra API configuration to make your website work with their hosting services.

In addition, another benefit that results from this (which may depend on your website's architecture and how you setup digitalocean instances), is that you don't get locked in to their platform.

Unlike Amazon AWS and Google, you'll probably be locked in once you scale, grow, and become more dependent on their cloud hosting services.

DigitalOcean Has One-Click Installation Setup Options

I'm sure most hosting plans have this feature by now, so it's not really a main selling point, but I'll mention it anyways. DigitalOcean also has one-click installation setup options.

DigitalOcean Has A Nice UI Design

The user dashboard where you can manage your account and droplets has a very nice looking UI design. It's clean, modern, and minimalistic. No clutter at all.

DigitalOcean Is Budget Friendly

DigitalOcean has a clear pricing system. Their lowest droplet plan starts at $5/mo. You only get charged while the VPS instance exists. You still get charged even if you "Turn Off" the VPS instance. The charge only stops once you delete the VPS instance.

With the lowest droplet plan, you get the following:

• 1 vCPU
• 1 GB RAM
• 25 GB SSD Disk Storage
• 1 TB Bandwidth

It's pretty good, and it supports multiple domains! Take that shared hosting plans (although it is not a fair comparison though)...

Not only that, if you sign up through a referral link, you get a $10 credit which, if you choose the lowest tier, will get you 2 months of free VPS hosting! Here's my referral link if you are interested: https://m.do.co/c/80a2e0cdadde

DigitalOcean Has An Active Community On Their Forums

Finally, they have an activity community on their forums. You can also find a lot of helpful guides that help beginners with certain issues when it comes to setting up certain websites, etc. Very handy especially for someone who is starting out without knowing a thing about Linux-based operating systems.

The Not So Great About DigitalOcean

Security

Because users have fine grain control over the VPS instance, security becomes a major issue if the VPS instance is not configured properly via SSH. You can risk getting your website hacked.

Architecture

When it comes time for you to scale your website, you have to setup your VPS instances from scratch. The entire architecture is in your hands. Sure, you can make the process a little bit less painful and faster via the One Click Apps, but you still have additional setup and configuration work to do in the VPS instance.

Conclusion

So if you are someone who has moved on from just purely HTML/CSS/JS and onto more advanced frameworks like Laravel, Node.js, etc., I highly recommend you to use DigitalOcean at least for a few months just to learn the basics of Linux for web deployment. Doing so will be very beneficial and educational at the same time. You'll have a better understanding of how everything works and communicates. Not only that, once you start looking into scalability and microservices, you'll start to see how all the pieces fit together without anything like a API to obscure the entire process. Yes, it may be a bit tedious at first, but again, it is very educational. If you are interested in fine-grain control over your web host operating system, well, there you have it! I absolutely do not recommend VPS hosting services to non-technical people though.

In my first job, I was in originally in charge of SEO, then my responsibilities grew to social media management, and eventually becoming the guy who made most of the technical decisions for the entire company. One of the decisions I made around the last or second to last year I worked there was switching their retail website from Magento to Shopify, and it was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made.

This blog post will explain a brief overview of some of the pros and cons of the two platforms, as well as why I made the switch...

The Story

When I first started working there, I was told they recently had a freelancer who redesigned and redeveloped their website on Magento. It was a major improvement compared to what they used to have (they were still using their old website when I was applying for the job, so I had a chance to take a peak before getting the interview).

Whoever the freelancer was, did a good job making the new site except the fact that it wasn't optimized for mobile devices at all.

If memory serves me right, they were using Magento 1.6 at the time when I started working. It didn't take long for me to earn their trust to be able to gain access to the website. It was my first time seeing the Magento platform in action. I can see why it was selected over Wordpress and any other available self-hosted options out there.

However, that was just the beginning of the technical maintenance hell that awaits later down the road...

One day, Magento decided that it was time they released a patch or update, and I was requested by my supervisor to help update their site since I was the only one capable of such a technical task. So I did a lot of quick but detailed research beforehand, backed up the site, and performed the update. That's when the hell begins.

What could go wrong? It's just a simple patch. All I needed to do was download this file, upload it, let the script do its thing, and I'll be off on my merry way.

Sadly, nothing ever goes that smoothly. Having been pampered and spoiled by the 100% successful updates and upgrades I've experienced in Wordpress, my expectations were probably the same as yours, and that was it should update with no problem at all, but that wasn't the case at all. Instead, after the entire site updated, the site no longer loaded properly. In fact, the entire site crashed and I was greeted with errors.

Fast forward a few months and a few years later, I've repeated the process once more with extra precautions while I made my way from v1.6 and miraculously somehow to v1.8 successfully after several painful and worrisome update sessions. You've guessed it, nothing went smoothly at all. I had to do a lot of googling, and I wasn't the only one who is facing these updates and upgrade hell. Oh yeah, I also made sure to have a local offline copy of the website running properly in case the live site broke down again so that we could still access the order information.

Finally, it was 2015, Magento 2.0 was released. This time, I decided that instead of trying to migrate the data from Magento 1.x series to the newly refactored Magento 2.0 database, I've concluded through my past multiple attempts that it would be better for me and for the company to start over from scratch, and manually re-enter the products. First, I spun up a Magento 2 instance on XAMPP on the computer I was using, and began the process of making new entries. Once I finished, I took down the live website after making a full backup via FTP. Then, I proceeded with making the final adjustments to the local Magento 2 and published it via FTP to the live server, and we were on our way. After a few minor errors, everything was running smoothly. When it came time for Magento 2's first official patch/update, everything went much more smoothly until a few updates later, everything started to become hell once more.

By that time, I had enough. I brought up the topic of switching platforms to either Wordpress or Shopify. It wasn't until several months later that we finally decided to make the switch since the time saved from maintenance hell would benefit the company more in terms of focusing my time and energy as well as future employees who would inherit my role to focus more on marketing and less on technical issues. Another reason was that ever since Magento released the 2.0 series, they removed the "Credit Card Payment" option, which by the way, most of our customers used as their preferred payment method! Knowing that, it definitely hurt our sales a lot. By going with Shopify, we were able to bring back that payment option for our customers.

Magento Pros And Cons

Despite having switched to Shopify, there were things that I liked and disliked about Magento as a whole (regardless of version 1.x or 2.x).

Things I Liked About Magento

• Magento did well on the SEO optimization department.
• Magento had proper categorized URL permalink structures.
• Magento excels as an ecommerce platform since it was built to be an ecommerce platform in the first place.
• Magento has a maintenance mode built in.
• Magento has a lot of features in their CMS that you can provide control over the entire site (more than what Wordpress can do).
• Decently active in terms of patches and minor updates being released.

Things I Didn't Like About Magento

• Of course, the updates and upgrade hell that comes with it that breaks the site.
• The removal of supporting credit card payments from customers in Magento 2.0
• Most plugins were paid, and they were very expensive! To give you an idea, you can probably buy 2-3 Wordpress plugins for the cost of buying 1 Magento plugin.
• The learning curve for Magento themes is hard (to me anyways).

Shopify Pros And Cons

Things I Liked About Shopify

• Less technical maintenance and frustrations.
• Clean and simple CMS user interface.
• Shopify supports a variety of payment methods (even modern payment solutions like Android Payments)!
• The theme engine for Shopify theme development is a lot easier to grasp.

Things I Didn't Like About Shopify

• Not as SEO optimized like Magento is.
• The subscription fee is expensive compared to self-hosting (although it does make sense since they're company will be in charge of taking care of maintenance, etc.)
• A lot of the paid plugins had a subscription fee attached to it compared to a one time cost.
• The settings could be tricky for a first-time Shopify user (such as making sure certain locations were taxed properly, etc.)
• They use the term "collections" to represent "categories" in the URL link structure which bugs me in terms of SEO.

Why Didn't You Switch To Wordpress?

Again, one of the requirements is to lower the amount of technical maintenance required on the backend of the company. Also, because this is a business we're talking about, having a good and secure platform for customers to checkout is incredibly important.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Wordpress, I do like it as an end-user. It does a great job with blogging and does a potentially great job with ecommerce with the help of WooCommerce. I do like the permalink structure and ability to customize it more than Shopify.

Conclusion

In the end, the switch was made from Magento to Shopify mainly for lower maintenance purposes as well as to regain certain features that Magento once had. Not only that, by going with Shopify, it helps save time needed to worry about technical issues, and helps the business focus more on accomplishing their business goals.

Earlier this year, I read a book called The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey. The book is basically about Chris taking a year to focus purely on being as productive as he can be, try new things to save time, and be more efficient at the same time while sharing his findings in this book. One of the time management tips he suggested on how to be more productive is by creating a Maintenance Day.

What Is A Maintenance Day?

A Maintenance Day is a day where you do all of your chores and other tasks that are repetitive and has a low yielding result in terms of productivity towards your day.

Why Should You Have A Maintenance Day?

Let's say you have to clean the house (e.g. vaccuum or sweep the floor, clean the toilet, etc.). If you do this on a daily basis or spread across the week, it'll be time consuming. Not only that, it'll interrupt whatever productive focus and momentum you had built up.

Now, if we created a Maintenance Day, a day in the week where you put all of your low return tasks and you focus on doing that all on that one day, you will be more productive. The reason for this is there will be less distractions during the other days when you are focusing on more important tasks.

For example, let's say you sweep the floor every day, and it takes you about 5 minutes to cover the entire area of your house (time may vary depending on the size of your house). Because you're doing it daily, you end up spending 35 minutes on a single chore! That's enough time to either watch 3 short YouTube videos, listen to 10 songs or watch 1 episode of your favorite TV show with 5 minutes to spare.

However, if you bundle it up with your other chores on a dedicated Maintenance Day, you would only have to sweep the house once every week. Because it takes about 5 minutes based on this example scenario, you end up saving 30 minutes of time! If we translate that to minimum wage, that's about $5-$7 (depending on where you live) for half an hour's work.

How To Make Your Maintenance Day More Productive

Now, I'm sure we can all agree that doing chores usually don't have a big ROI (return on investment) in terms of productivity. However, there are several tactics you can implement to make your Maintenance Day more productive, and have a greater ROI.

If I were to use the floor sweeping example again, because it is something that doesn't require a lot of brain power, you can potentially do another task alongside it. For instance, you can listen to some music or better yet, you can listen to a audiobook or podcast in the background while you sweep the floor! This way, you can learn something new while you are doing your chores. Plus, it's a great way to make the time pass without feeling like a robot. After all, you're only going to do this just once a week thanks to the awesome concept of a Maintenance Day.

5 Steps on How To Get Started On Creating Your Maintenance Day

1. First list all of the chores you have to do frequently that is repetitive and predictable.
2. Choose a day in the week where you are most free, and dedicate a majority of that day as your Maintenance Day. For most people, this is usually Saturday or Sunday.
3. Start tackling your chores during your least energetic hours of the day. The reason behind this is so that you can spend your most energetic hours on productive tasks or just things that matter the most to you.
4. While you are doing each of those tasks, if possible, try to find some way to creatively take advantage of doing something else at the same time that won't conflict with the chores at hand to stay productive. Make sure to stay safe at the same time too! :)
5. Finally, repeat the same process on the same day every single week. That's it!

Conclusion

Doing chores doesn't have to be an unproductive task, it can be significantly be more productive. It just takes a little bit of creativity and a little bit of outside-the-box thinking (in this case, creating a Maintenance Day)! Hopefully after reading this post, you now are inspired to take action and try out the Maintenance Day time management technique for yourself, help you be a little bit more productive, and save you some time for more important matters to deal with. Let me know in the comments below, what little things do you do in your life to stay a little bit more productive?

One feature I'm sure you've noticed recently is that for some YouTube videos out there, clickable blue hashtags started appearing on top of the titles.

At first, I thought this was something generated automatically by YouTube for high performing videos. Then, after seeing it more and more often, I started to think that it was a feature reserved for YouTubers with a certain amount of subscribers. Eventually, as someone who owns a YouTube channel himself, I eventually decided to look up how to add hashtags to the title of YouTube videos.

NOTE - The changes shows up immediately if you view your video on your smartphone device via the YouTube app.

Surprisingly, this feature isn't so obvious on the backend because there's no specific form field labeled "Hashtags" for you to list them in.

How To Add Hashtags To The Title Of Your YouTube Videos

1. Go to your Creator Studio.
2. Select a video to edit, and click "Edit".
3. Go to the section where you edit your Video Description.
4. Inside the Video Description text area, scroll down to the bottom, and add your list of hashtags how you normally would on other social platforms.
5. Once you are done, just save the changes to your video.
6. Open your YouTube app from your smartphone, and view the video that you just edited. If it shows up, congrats! You've done it correctly!

Limitations of YouTube Hashtags

Despite YouTube having added a hashtag feature to their platform at long last, there are some limitations or restrictions that you absolutely have to be aware of.

• Spaces don't work in hashtags. (Don't do this: #Happy Birthday. Do this: #HappyBirthday)
• Only a maximum of 3 hashtags will show up on your video.
• You cannot add more than 15 hashtags. If you add more than 15, none of the hashtags will show on your video AND you can potentially get your video removed by YouTube.
• Your hashtags can't be misleading, vulgar, sexual, inappropriate, hate speech, and harassing. The hashtags can't be repetitive.

Here's the link for the full list, detailed descriptions, as well as any updates they might make to their hashtag policy: YouTube Video Hashtag Policies

Just a shameless plug, if you are a beginner who wants to learn programming, check out my FREE C++ programming tutorial series on my channel: Eric's C++ Programming for Beginners YouTube Series

Conclusion

Congratulations! Now you know how to quickly and easily add hashtags to your YouTube videos! Don't forget to take SEO into consideration and do your keyword research for them to be effective. Also, as an added bonus, you can consider using trending hashtags that are happening at the time to potentially make your video rank higher if it is approriate and relevant to your content.

If you are reading this post, I'm confident that it's safe to assume that you have some sort of entrepreneurial spirit in you or you just recently came from YouTube after watching some supposedly self-claimed "guru" who generated X amount in the past few days, and are now wondering if you should start a dropshipping business.

So, should you start a dropshipping business?

This is one question I asked myself back in 2017 after learning about the concept of dropshipping by accident after working at a small business eCommerce company for a while. I eventually played around with the idea, and dove in myself to see what it was like.

What Is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model where you sell products online without holding the actual product in your inventory. Instead, you list the products you want to sell on your online store website at a higher price, and whenever an order is placed, you then make an order on the actual website where the product is being sold from and have it be sent to your customer's address while you put your own information as the billing address. Whatever the difference in cost was, that is your profit.

Is Dropshipping Easy?

No. Whatever the business model may be, whether it be not having to hold inventory, whether it is subscription-based or not, dropshipping is just another ecommerce business. What this means is you will face all the challenges that every ecommerce business owners face, which includes business, marketing, sales, and technical challenges.

If you are doing this solo, you better have some pretty darn good internet marketing skills and a big budget to back up your marketing activities otherwise you're in it for a disappointing ride or a long ride of trials and errors.

Here is a common list of challenges you will face in the world of eCommerce when you are just starting out with a extremely low budget and no existing fanbase or following of any kind:

• Finding the right product and niche to sell to
• Getting the right traffic to your website
• Showing up in a good position on search engine results (SEO - search engine optimization)
• Having a unique, professional, and trustworthy looking website
• Having a good product page (good product pictures, good product description, etc)
• Converting your traffic into sales
• Long shipping time from manufacturer to consumer (~2 weeks to ~1 month)

Not only that, you are also going to be competing with non-dropshipping sites such as Amazon. I'm sure you do this as well. Whenever you want to buy something online or offline, you'll probably pay a quick visit to amazon.com to see if they have the same item at a higher quality but at a lower price with better shipping times.

Startup Costs

It doesn't cost much money to get the basic tools needed to start (other than buying a domain name and web hosting services), but that means a lot of people will be doing this. However, if you have no technical skills at all, meaning you don't know how to create a logo, you don't know how to create a custom themed website, and you don't know how to edit pictures or take proper product photos, the startup cost will easily go up fast.

Here's a rough estimate of some of the costs:

• Domain Name: ~$10/yr
• Web Hosting: ~$60/yr (unless you use sites like Shopify, then the costs goes up)
• Website Theme: ~$30+
• SSL: ~$40/yr (unless you use sites like Shopify)
• Ads: ~$1,825/yr+ (unless you have an existing following or fanbase to market/sell to)

How Important Is It To Have A Big Budget For Advertising

If you are not willing to play this long term, you'll have to either have very good marketing skills/strategy, an existing large fanbase, or a big budget to advertise your ecommerce store products.

Remember, it's easy to acquire the tools to get started setting up a dropshipping store; however, because of this, there are a lot of other people like you who are in the game. What that means is, a lot of people will be spending $5 on ads on platforms like Facebook. So in the end of the day, having a big budget does matter. This is what these "gurus" on YouTube never tell you. It's all in the marketing, but it's also in the money too.

Conclusion

So, after you've read all of this, should you start a dropshipping business? It depends. If you have the money to test a variety of products, and are willing to play this long term, go for it. You'll learn a lot of stuff from the experience. However, this doesn't mean you'll be guaranteed to succeed. If you are the opposite, and you just want to make a quick buck with a small ad budget that's not at least $1,000 a year, I would suggest that you avoid dropshipping altogether.

Back in 2017, I found out about a business model called "Dropshipping". I was still employed at the time working as a employee who wore multiple hats, and some of the tasks involved some internet marketing since it was a ecommerce business. One day, during my spare time at home after work, I saw a video on YouTube about dropshipping.

So, the normal response for me to do was to try and start a dropshipping business and hopefully be successful at it. Sadly, I wasn't successful in making a successful dropshipping business. After trying 3 times, I finally threw in the towel and called it quits as it was draining my pocket very quickly, and I had student loans to pay off still.

Despite having failed to start a successful dropshipping business, here are a few things I learned from trying to start a successful dropshipping business.

What Is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model where you list and sell products on your own website at a higher price without having to carry the actual item in your inventory. When someone purchases an item from your website, you use the money you received to buy the item from the main source with your personal billing information, but with your customer's shipping address as the destination. Whatever the difference in price was from your store subtracted by the cost from the main source, that is your profit margin. That is basically the concept of a dropshipping business.

Dropshipping Is Easy To Start

Surprisingly, the barrier to entry for dropshipping is easy. Well, as someone who has designed, developed, and deployed his own websites several times in the past, it was ridiculously easy. However, you don't need to know anything about web development to get started. In fact, all you need is experience buying stuff online, money, and some common sense on navigating the internet, you should be able to figure it all out fairly quickly.

Dropshipping Is Competitive, Very Competitive

At first glance, you might think dropshipping is easy, but it is not. In fact, if you were to look at dropshipping from a different perspective, at the end of the day, dropshipping is ecommerce.

What does that mean?

It means that you are competing with other people and businesses who are in the ecommerce space, especially those who are in your niche with the same or similar product(s).

Not only that, because dropshipping is so easy to get started, with the low barrier to entry, there are a lot of dropshippers out there, and I mean A LOT. That means there will be a ton of competition. Last time I checked, the Earth's human population is still on the rise!

Dropshipping Is Not Easy

Other than competition, dropshipping in its more finer details is not easy. Anyone can just find a product from sites like Aliexpress, list it on their site with a marked up price, and hope for the best after running a few ads or so.

There is much more to dropshipping. Keep in mind that it is a website that we're dealing with here and it's ecommerce too. Lots of things go into this business that can determine its success or failure.

You Need To Focus On A Niche

This is something I knew already, and that when it comes to any business, the best way to success is to focus on a niche. By focusing on a niche versus trying to target everyone, it helps everyone in the business have a common goal and focus.

Not only that, by narrowing down the target market, you'll have an easier time when it comes to marketing your brand message out there. It will help reduce your overall marketing cost, and it will lead to a higher conversion rate since most of your efforts are being condensed into a powerful blow. It's all in the quality, not the quantity of the traffic.

You Need To Test And Find The Right Product

Once you have a niche selected, you need to start testing products. Products that you normally think of right off the bat will usually perform very poorly because it's commonplace.

You need to choose a product that will trigger the target audience in some way to have an impulse to buy the product. That means the product can't be generic. It has to be very relevant towards your niche's target audience. To them, whatever that product is you are trying to sell, it can't be just perceived as "just another __" or an ordinary product.

Also, it's ideal to choose a product where the buyer is the end user. If you are targeting products that are meant for young children to use, but their parents are the buyers, you'll have to be very creative towards your marketing strategy. In this case, trust is an absolute must.

You Need A Big Ad Budget

From the previous topic, this leads me to the fact that you will need a big ad budget.

The reason being is that most people when they start dropshipping, there's a high chance that they don't have a huge following, and generating traffic to your dropshipping website will be important. To do so, the easiest way is to do it through ads on sites like Facebook.

You'll also need ads to test products too. Not only that, you'll also need the money to market the products and make necessary changes and test which type of ads work. This is an entire separate topic on its own - ad optimization.

You Need A Good Internet Marketing Strategy

Other than having a good product and a big ad budget, having a strong knowledge and strategies in internet marketing will be the ultimate deciding factor towards whether you will make it or break it in dropshipping or any ecommerce ventures.

I cannot emphasize how important it is to have a good internet marketing strategy.

Now, I normally wouldn't cuss online, but having a good internet marketing strategy is fkn important! My friends know that if I cuss, it must be deadly serious.

Do I Recommend Other People To Try Out Dropshipping?

If you are someone who is just trying to make a quick buck, then I absolutely DO NOT RECOMMEND you to do dropshipping. Dropshipping is NOT a get rich quick scheme or a get rich quick strategy towards becoming a millionaire. Dropshipping, like any ecommerce business models, is a long term game. If you aren't willing to put in the time, patience, and effort, you will fail very quickly. You're better off saving your money at that point.

I do recommend dropshipping if you are willing to do this long term, learn, adapt, and put in the effort needed to succeed. Not only that, if you have a big enough ad budget, go for it. Just remember that you probably won't get any sale in the first month or few months. There's no guarantee, and that any opportunity has some sort of risk attached to it.

Conclusion

So after having tried 3 times at trying to start a successful dropshipping business, and after learning all the things I've learned so far from it, will I try dropshipping again in the future? The answer to that is maybe.

The reason for that is depending on my financial circumstances and how things are playing out for me in my life, if I have a decent income and have no student loans or debts to worry about, I will most likely give dropshipping another shot. However, by then, there would probably be a lot of competition in a saturated market that it becomes very risky to the point that I may as well be throwing money away, or better yet just spend that money on lottery tickets and hopefully get a buck or two in return at the very least. I don't recommend you waste your money on lottery tickets by the way (I think statistically speaking, you only have less than a percent chance of getting the grand prize.)

From my freelancing experience so far, I've noticed that there are a lot of different types of clients in need of a website out there. This ranges from those who wants to be cheap, and those that realize that quality will cost money.

To eliminate cheap clients, I've decided to instead of making specific freelance web development services which I had advertised on my personal website's services page, I revised it so it is modeled after 3-4 different packages instead. The pricing of each service will vary to match each client for their individual needs so that I get paid what I deserve, and they get the value they desire.

Competitive Research

First off, I did some competitive research to see what other freelancers out there go about pricing their services. From what I've seen so far, the more popular and successful ones usually go by a web package system like what I just recently changed to.

I decided to go with a 3 tier freelance web package model plus a 4th tier which is geared towards more customized solution.

1. Starter Web Package
2. Standard Web Package
3. Professional Web Package
4. Custom Web Package

The first 3 tiers are geared towards a large majority of small businesses or people who are starting out who don't necessarily need a crazy website. This can range from a simple landing page to a customized dynamic Wordpress website. As for the 4th tier, which the geeky side of me looks forward to the most, involves creating a webapp from scratch using a Full Stack framework setup.

To Include SEO or To Not Include SEO

One of the questions I asked myself was should I include a basic SEO package or charge it as a low cost separate add-on?

I decided that in order for me to compete on value, and to not play a game of a race to the lowest priced services, I decided to include a basic SEO package with all my web development services FREE of charge.

Getting Clients Outside of Upwork and Fiverr

So far, I haven't gotten too much luck with Upwork or Fiverr in terms of getting lots of web development gigs as those two sites are filled with clients who are looking for the lowest price. Not only that, the immense amount of competition that exists on there on the freelancer side is insane. Now, this doesn't mean I will quit using the platform altogether, it just means that I will have to find other ways to find clients. I do have a strategy or two left in mind that I have yet to try. Normally, one would start off with friends, family members, and close relatives, but sadly none of them have any need for a website. I've already exhausted that. Not to mention, I have to figure out which niche or industry I want to focus on creating websites for. Hmm...

Conclusion

So yeah. I updated my website yesterday to reflect these new changes. All I have to do now is market myself, find clients, and hopefully make a few sales. As of now, I am now down to $2,700 in the bank. The road to becoming a successful entrepreneur is a long and tough one, but I'm not giving up.

Ever since I quit my job at the end of 2017, I have been working on my web development skills to hopefully generate some sort of income through freelancing. I applied to many gigs on Upwork every single month.

I had one freelance gig that my friend whose parent's friend needed a catalog website. Sadly, I didn't do too well on that one. I suck at Wordpress theme development (referring to the harder ones). I also had another gig which was my first one from Upwork which involved me designing a website in Photoshop for my client's startup.

Ever since then, it has been pretty quiet. I only got like 2 responses (no exaggeration) from my Upwork proposals since.

This week, I decided to add one more gig to my Fiverr account, and surprisingly, someone bought one of my older services on Fiverr which involved me coming up with a list of relevant hashtags for him to use to grow his Instagram account. That was an easy $5 (well, $4 after Fiverr's fee).

A week ago, I focused on improving my personal website's portfolio entries by adding more details to the individual case studies. It's good in content, but now, I just have to organize it properly as well as improving the overall presentation.

One of the things I noticed while looking at freelance web development gigs is almost 80% to 90% of the posts that pops up mostly involves Wordpress in one way or another. However, when it comes to more advanced projects that involve the use of Node.js, the requests for these projects are typically a lot harder and somewhat out of my level of experience at the moment. In other words, most of the gigs are on the opposite of ends of the spectrum.

Perhaps its time I shift gears and start practicing my skills as a Wordpress Web Developer?

With technology becoming more and more integrated into our everyday lives, the demand for more jobs in technical fields, especially those involving computer programming, becomes more available and more competitive.

If you are someone who wants to learn how to learn programming for beginners with absolutely no experience in coding, here's how you can do so based on my own experience.

I've been through this process myself in three different ways, and I'll share with you my findings and experiences so you can save more time while you start yours. I started to learn programming around my 3rd year of high school. Unlike other students though, I learned programming on my own. My school didn't offer any programming courses, so I had to take matters with my own hands.

I have learned how to code in 3 different ways:

1. self taught
2. online course
3. formally in class

Personally, I found myself getting the most results doing it self-taught; however, it may vary for others. Before I continue, I want to clarify things a bit first.

I started out at being self-taught. I later took an online course to learn a different programming language. Finally when I started college, I was required to take several programming courses.

Prerequisite Knowledge and Nice To Know

When it comes to programming, there isn't much knowledge you need to know prior to starting. It would be nice to know math up to the Pre-Algebra level (even the basics of Pre-Algebra is fine). You won't need to rely on harder math knowledge, such as calculus, statistics, and probability until you reach harder concepts such as machine learning and optimization problems. For the most part, you should be able to survive with knowledge up to Pre-Algebra.

Choosing a Programming Language

Don't worry too much about choosing a programming language is what people often say. I kind of agree, and I kind of disagree with that.

I personally learned C++ and played around with Python early on. I ended up choosing to learn C++ as my first programming language out of all the available options out there.

Which one should you learn for starters?

First off, it depends. Do you want to make mobile apps? Do you want to make websites? Do you want to make desktop apps? If you don't know, that's fine!

For most people, it usually starts off with C++, Python or Java since most universities start off with either one. At the end of the day, it's just personal preference.

If you want to make websites, then that's a different beast. You'll want to learn HTML and CSS, followed by Javascript and then learn a backend language such as PHP and a database querying language such as mySQL.

If you want to make Android Apps someday, you're better off starting with Java since that's the native programming language that Android Apps are made from.

As for iOS Apps, they can be made with Objective C or Swift. However, because you are a beginner, you're better off tackling C++ and then transition to Objective C or Swift.

But let's say you are into hardware and IoT. Then you should learn C or C++. In terms of most versatile (in case you change your mind about going the hardware route), go with C++.

I know this due to research, personal experience, and the fact that I majored in Computer Engineering, and this type of stuff is one of the several things that interests me.

Programming Concepts

One of the tough things about learning programming on your own and without someone to ask for help or ask questions on is that it's sometimes a hit or miss. You might not be going about learning the topic in the most efficient way possible. That's why in school, your teacher gives you a syllabus. A syllabus is basically something that outlines what you're going to learn in that course.

In the case of programming, a very general overview is:

1. Procedural Programming
2. Object Oriented Programming

So first, you'll start off by exploring the category of procedural programming. Within procedural programming, you'll learn a lot of the basic programming concepts you'll use often.

Once you've learned enough of it, it's time for you to move on to Object Oriented Programming (or OOP for short). Within Object Oriented Programming, you'll also have several more concepts to learn.

To make your life easier, here is a quick syllabus of the topics you should cover when learning procedural programming (just to demystify some of the learning process for you.)

Procedural Programming

1. Displaying Text or Printing Text
2. Data Types and Variables
3. Getting User Input
4. If/Else Statements
5. String Data Types
6. While Loop
7. For Loop
8. Do While Loop
9. Arrays
10. Switch Statements
11. Multidimensional Arrays (2D and 3D Arrays)
12. Functions
13. Recursion
14. Enumerations

Now, there are more concepts to learn, but you should at least cover these 14 at the bare minimum. I organized them in the way I would learn them.

Here's a very brief overview for Object Oriented Programming.

Object Oriented Programming

1. Encapsulation
2. Abstraction
3. Inheritance
4. Polymorphism

Practice Makes Perfect

Now, I'm sure you've heard from people that say programming is hard, there's a lot of stuff to memorize, etc.

Well, one way to make memorization easier is to actually practice what you learn. Let's say you read and learned about how to print text to the screen just a minute ago. Now I want you to immediately fire up your editor and start creating a simple program that will display your text of choice. Play around with it. See what happens if the text goes to a new line. Will whitespace interfere with the program's functionality? etc.

Another tip is to practice your older concepts as you move on so that you don't forget.

I have one more tip that will make the entire process of learning programming a lot easier that most people won't bring up at all, and that is project-based programming. I'll explain that in the next section.

Project-Based Programming

Finally, the thing that works best for me is to approach learning programming with a project-oriented mindset (or goals-based).

Try to come up with a project you wish to make. No matter how hard or ambiguous it may be. Just assume it is possible.

Then, while you are learning a new programming concept every day, try to make a super dumbed down version of the program project you wish to make with what you've learned so far.

For example, let's say you wanted to make a RPG game. You don't know how to make one, but you've played one before so you know what the experience is like. The new player is usually greeted with a screen with the option to create a new profile or use an existing profile. Then based on the decision made, the game will proceed with where they last left off or a new storyline.

When you first start off, you'll learn how to display text on the screen. So might as well display a dumbed down menu or list of text that represents the options a user can choose. Once you learn about if/else statements which allow your program to make decisions based on certain conditions, you can probably make a feature that mimics which option the user chose to start the game, etc.

Once you've learned the basics of procedural programming, you can branch out further and learn object oriented programming while starting to improve upon the project that you have so far. At the same time, do some research on how to actually make a game from scratch using the programming language you've chosen to learn.

By learning programming via a project-oriented approach, you'll not only be motivated, but you'll also have a clear objective as to what you're trying to accomplish. I'm sure you've probably asked yourself before in school, "why am I learning this in class? It's not like I'm going to use it after I finish school." Well, because you set a goal to create whatever it is you wanted to, you'll make the connections on how each concept is going to be used in your program! :)

Conclusion

Hopefully after reading the entire article, I've demystified the mysteries of approaching the process of learning programming as a beginner.

From my personal experience after owning 4 computers (13 computers in terms of making backups of) so far, I've learned some important lessons in somewhat of a hard way on how to make backing up your computer's files less stressful.

Who Is This Tutorial For?

If you are someone who just got a new computer not too long ago, or is going to get one soon, then this is the perfect post for you. In fact, if you already have a computer, and don't plan to get a new one, that's fine too. This can still apply to you as well.

Organize Your Computer's Files

This one task is one that will make a huge impact towards whether or not you will make backing up your computer's files less stressful or not, and that is file organization.

You Have A New Computer

If you have a new computer that's just a few weeks old or perhaps younger, start setting up a plan on how you decide to organize your files from here on out. You'll thank me a few years from now.

You Have A Older Computer

If you already have a computer, the best way to start organizing your computer's files is by getting rid of junk. After all, if you organize your files while the junk files are still there, you're just going to make more work for yourself.

Uninstall programs you rarely use, programs that are unimportant, and programs that you don't use at all (as long as they don't affect the stability and security of your system.)

Manage your files in your Downloads folder. This folder can quickly build up in size, so this is a great place to start when it comes to deleting files.

Use CCleaner

CCleaner is a free tool that allows you to clean junk files off your computer (which also includes your browser's cookies, cache, and tempfiles.) It also can clean up some unused registry files on your computer that used to associate with programs you once had installed on your computer. It also has a program uninstallation section in case you don't want to navigate your way to Windows' control panel for uninstalling programs natively.

You'll be surprised at how much space you're going to save from doing this.

Defragment Your Hard Drive

NOTE - If your computer uses a SSD (solid state drive) instead of a hard drive or a hybrid drive, SKIP this step!

Ok, for those of you who still use a regular hard drive in your computer like I do, it is best to defragment your hard drive before beginning the backup process. This will help speed up your computer a bit. Plus, it's good maintenance in terms of computer's performance.

Consider Using A Free Backup Software

Consider using a free backup software that will copy every single file on your hard drive to another location of your choice (preferably on a external hard drive).

If you don't care about the operating system or programs that you have installed, then you can simply copy and paste all the files you've organized onto a external storage device of your choice. If you organized your files properly, you shouldn't have too many folders or that hard of a time doing this. If you are having a tedious time, consider revising your file organization strategy once more.

Automate It!

There are software and services out there that you can use to automate the entire backup process. This can include copying the entire hard drive or just backing up specific files/folders to an external source. That way, you don't have to waste your time every month or so having to do this process.

Conclusion

Now that you've cleaned up your computer, organized your files properly, you now know how to easily backup your computer with the least amount of frustration possible. If you automate it with some software, great! Now you can do this hands off.

When it comes to trying to succeed as an entrepreneur, it's not easy. There comes a point where money takes the highest priority before one can continue pursuing something of high risk, in this case, entrepreneurship. During the timing of this blog post that I am writing right now, I have about $2,800 left in the bank, and $0 in income since I am unemployed.

I spent some of the first 6 months of 2018 trying to apply for a job as a web developer, but sadly, I rarely ever get any responses from my job applications that I sent out through Monster.com, Indeed.com, and ZipRecruiters.com. I've changed my resume 3-4 times, and I've kept on polishing and learning new skills.

NOTE - By responses, I mean any type of response, such as a reply from the company of being rejected or accepted for an interview.

It is now June 22, 2018, I just came back from my interview at Chipotle. By the time you are reading this post, I probably either got accepted by Chipotle, rejected by Chipotle, or I probably got accepted but decided not to accept Chipotle's offer due to a change of heart.

My Chipotle Interview Experience

This was my first time applying to a job that didn't have a college education as a requirement, and it was a restaurant position. I had zero knowledge and experience about this industry.

I studied up about them, watched videos from past successful employees on how to prepare for their interview, and yeah.

Because of their type of business, they were busy serving customers, so when I went in, they just told me to have a seat and wait until their manager was available to do the interview. When it was time, the interview took place.

Unlike your typical interview for an office position, this one was a group interview. I took the interview alongside with two other candidates who applied for the same position as I did: Restaurant Crew Member.

So you're probably wondering at this point, why are you applying for a restaurant position even though you have a degree in Computer Engineering? Good question.

As mentioned earlier before, I tried applying to many companies, but failed to get a response, and those who did respond, mostly ended up rejecting me. From that timelength, I've only managed to get 2 interviews. That was it. Sadly, I failed the technical interview, but I continued to study and continue brainstorming new ideas to add on to my portfolio and hopefully make a successful startup out of one.

Okay, so back to Chipotle.

One of the questions I expected, based on my research from past employees sharing their experience, was "what is food with integrity", which surprisingly, never came up nor did any question related to Chipotle besides "why do you want to work at Chipotle?"

The person who was interviewing me basically asked questions about what your goals are in the next 6 months, what is your most proudest achievement (regardless of how big or small or whether it was successful or not), why should we hire you (or was it what do you bring to the table for Chipotle), and some other generic interview questions which I've forgotten by now.

One of the things I knew that would jeopardize my chances of getting the job was I didn't bring my resume nor did I dress up to business casual attire with a tie at the time. To be honest, deep down inside me, I felt conflicted as to whether or not I should go through with this if accepted. I knew that it would be a major setback towards my desire to become a successful entrepreneur. Plus, even if I were to give up being an entrepreneur and go full force with pursuing getting a job as a programmer for the rest of my life, working at Chipotle would probably be a major setback career wise, but right now, I need money to help pay the bills and to get rid of that student loans (which is almost $8,000) is priority.

Update 6/26/18

This morning, I woke up, greeted with an email notification of Chipotle's rejection of me for the position.

Compared to my other rejection emails, I didn't feel sad nor did I feel happy. I just felt the same way as I did every other day while being unemployed. With this, I conclude the first entry of hopefully many entries of my journey as someone who is trying his best to pursue the dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

A few months back, AMD dipped to around $10/share right after Bitcoin and all the other altcoins in the cryptocurrency market plummeted.

I sold my 2 ETH, and I reinvested that money into the stock market. I used a small portion of it to even out my MU (Micron) stocks, and spent the rest on AMD. Last month, I sold all my TSLA (Tesla) stocks, and reinvested that money into AMD.

I know that most people think of Intel when they make a decision to either buy or build a computer. However, despite this, I decided to go with AMD.

DISCLAIMER - This is in no way any financial advice. You are responsible for your own actions. This article is strictly my opinion as to why I chose to buy AMD stocks over Intel stocks. I'm not telling you that you should buy any of these stocks.

Why I Chose AMD Over Intel Stocks

The reason for my decision has to do with a lot of things, and that has to do with the far future and potential that AMD has which greatly outweighs Intel.

If you take a look at NVDA (Nvidia), they went up several folds in the past few years! As of the writing of this post, June 22, 2018, Nvidia is at $250.60/share.

For those of you who don't know about Nvidia, Nvidia is basically a tech company known for creating graphics cards (GPU - graphics processing unit).

Uses for Graphics Cards

Graphics cards can be used for a lot of things:

• machine learning, deep learning, AI
• self driving vehicles
• displaying and rendering graphics for gaming and other graphics intensive activities
• virtual reality
• etc.

Now, when it comes to graphics cards, the two main companies that comes to mind when it comes to making the actual GPU itself are Nvidia and AMD. Sure, Intel does make graphics chips incorporated inside their CPUs, but they don't perform as fast as dedicated graphics cards.

With this in mind, AMD has more potential than Intel, and could potentially rise very high in value just like Nvidia did, but probably not as high as Nvidia right now.

The main reason why I see AMD with the most potential for growth instead of Intel is because AMD creates BOTH CPUs AND GPUs! Not only that, if you think about the increase in demand for gaming, and machine learning based advancements in technology as time goes by, the demand for GPUs keeps going up.

From the point as a stock investor, AMD definitely has the biggest profit in terms of ROI, but it will have to be a long term game to really benefit from it. If you compare the price of a AMD stock to a Intel stock, it is way below Intel. AMD is currently $15.75 thanks to Trump and tariffs, and Intel is at $52.51.

Yes, Intel CPUs do have graphics chips inside of them, but they are integrated graphics cards, and they don't perform as well as a dedicated graphics card. Even if we were to compare them to AMD's integrated graphics inside their CPUs, AMD's GPUs are most likely going to outperform Intel's graphics in the long run due to the fact that AMD has been in the GPU space a lot more longer than Intel has.

Conclusion

In conclusion, with the increase in demand for self-driving cars, AI-related innovations, machine learning, and for better and faster graphics cards for gaming and entertainment, AMD has the most potential when compared to Intel. In the long run, AMD has the most amount of room for major growth. Even though AMD is not $20/share right now, based on how things are progressing now, I think they will hit $20/share either by the end of this year or by the first half of 2019. Now you know why I chose AMD over Intel.

A fellow Cal Poly Pomona "senpai" once introduced to the participants of the HackPoly 2017 hackathon that he created an API called "Food2Fork." This API provided users with popular recipes shared online. As a sophomore studying for my Computer Engineering degree, I admired his accomplishment.

Ever since then, I wondered, how do I make an API? It wasn't until one and a half years later that the question resurfaced while I was planning out my startup's web backend, Goal Striver.

I eventually learned how to do it using PHP, PHP frameworks (e.g. Laravel), and Node.js via Express.js.

What is an API?

An API, or application program interface, is a way that allows software to interact with one another. There are different types of APIs out there. Each API has a unique functionality. For instance, if you wanted to incorporate a feature in your webapp, mobile app, or program, the ability to identify objects in an image, you would use a machine learning API such as Clarifai.

Fast forward to 2018, I now started to wonder where informational APIs get their information from in the first place. I also decided to avoid Google for an answer to see if I can figure it out by myself.

My First Hypothesis

My first hypothesis was that the developer decided to one day visit all the websites of a particular topic and copy/paste every single bit of information and store it into his or her database.

Now, I thought to myself, this can't be it. After all, these informational APIs have over several thousands of records of information. There's no way they have the sanity and patience to do this. It was at that moment that I remembered something I learned from back in my high school years when I was learning C++ on my own time: "if something is reptitious, automate it."

My Second Hypothesis

This led me to revisit a random project I experimented with, which had to do with creating a web crawler. Back in sophomore year of college, I created a web crawler by following Bucky's tutorial on YouTube using Python via BeautifulSoup. I made one back then because I wanted to make a Twitter bot. So with that in mind, I modified my hypothesis just slightly.

What if these developers actually created a web crawler and scraped the websites of interest, and stored the data into their database? This method seemed more feasible. Then, during the golden year of crypto, 2017, when Bitcoin was in its 5 figure success, I found out that CoinMarketCap has an API, and I also wondered how they created their site. It turns out they just connected to multiple separate APIs from almost all exchanges around the world, and just averaged the price out. No scraping involved, but easier way to get things done.

Creating My First Informational API

It is now 2018, I knew I had to make an informational data-driven API like Food2Fork for a project of mine. It is time I stopped procrastinating on it, and do what I had to do. Make a web crawler that will scrape data off the internet, so I had something to work off of. In addition, I might as well create a simple interface so that I can manually add in entries so I don't have to create a new web scraper every time.

It has been several years since I last used Python, and by now, I've forgotten everything about Python, much less the syntax of how to even make a simple class in Python! All I can recall is that the syntax for Python 2 vs Python 3 is vastly different. So I decided to use my new favorite tool, Node.js, to accomplish the task. Besides, I would have to use it eventually since I wanted to deploy it to a webserver in the very near future.

To speed up the process, I used the library called "cheerio", which helps me do most of the heavylifting when it comes to the data scraping and data parsing activities along with the use of "request.js". I spent the weekend working on this, and at last, I got it to work by Sunday before lunchtime. I activated the program, scraped a few websites, checked my database, and bam! Everything was there.

Now, what did I make specifically? I will keep that a secret. But, for my two friends who do know, should you happen to come across this post, shhh!!! Don't tell them. :)

Waking up to this morning, I decided to take a look at Food2Fork, and I realized that now, I can practically make a clone of the entire website thanks to my newfound knowledge of web scraping. muwahhahahahaha!

Conclusion

If you plan to create your own informational based API that doesn't involve releasing access rights or information stored in your database for an existing product or service, but rather, to create something to make accessing a particular type of information much easier, first make a web crawler, store that information, and then create a REST API for users to access it. However, before you go and make your web crawler, make sure you check the terms and privacy policy of the website you plan to crawl. They have legal terms as to whether they allow 3rd party crawlers, spiders, or web scrapers to perform said activities on their website.

Moving forward, what should I create next? I want to create more informational APIs like Food2Fork, but what is there to create when almost everything has been created already? Hmmm... I guess only time will tell. But, if you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to leave it in the comments, and I'll think about potentially giving it a shot if I find any practical use for that.