How Time Flies

I was quite amazed to realize that it is eight months since I last wrote on my beloved Vocal Media. I had my reasons for stopping, which included a bout of ill health as well as a desire to dedicate myself to writing a few books. That 'few' books turned out to be twenty-six in the end, all self-published on Amazon KDP.

Having reached a natural pause in writing, editing, formatting and publishing, I decided I needed to do some much-needed marketing. One of the ways I thought could be effective in promoting my books would be to create my own website, my own in terms of by me about me.

I finally decided to use a blogging design platform called Ghost, and I have to say I was quite impressed by what they have to offer. The editor is WYSIWYG and has everything you could possibly want in terms of user-friendly features.

In all, it took me fifteen days to complete the task from scratch. The end result is enough for some first viewers to tell me that it looks very professional. You cannot ask for more than that.

The site is called The Opus Connection and in fact serves as a heck of a lot more than a simple website. Indeed, it is now a blogging platform which I can write on to my heart's content and monetize.

I have to say it was not all plain sailing due to having to deal with Stripe, who I have had ongoing problems with for about two years. The problem seems to be to do with me living in Japan. Sometimes Stripe wants me to enter details in English, and other times in Japanese.

I used Google to translate the details that I had to enter and still, I could not make headway. Then my lovely wife took a look and told me that the Googler translator was wrong! She did a manual translation and that worked.

Then I had problems with my ID documents. I had to use my passport, which is British, or a visa, which is Japanese. I uploaded my passport and Stripe said I had held the camera too close. I tried again and then it said the camera was too far away. So I tried my Japanese Visa and Stripe said it was an invalid document!

Another problem I had was entering my bank details. Stripe said it could not find my bank. So I entered an English bank and an American one and they couldn't be found by Stripe neither.

Over the last fifteen days, I have spent more time having to deal with Stripe support than I have designing my new site! I spent hours a day, for days on end, writing emails and calling Stripe live chat multiple times. And still, I am waiting for some very simple matters to be resolved. However, I have at least got The Opus Connection fully integrated with Stripe and open for business.

My advice to anybody thinking of creating their own blog site or webpage is to use Ghost. I tried Wix, which does not have very reputable SEO, and WordPress, which can get very expensive. Ghost is reputed to be as robust on Google as WordPress is, and can be as cheap as Wix in hosting services. As for Stripe, if you live in a foreign country you may well have your work cut out for you.

Well, it's all completed now and it's time to get back to writing some content to feed the beast I have created and let loose on an unsuspecting public. Be sure to check it by following the link below and please let me know what you think.

the-opus-connection-com.ghost.io