I'm an independent web designer and digital marketer based in Paranaque, Philippines. I make websites and Adalo apps for all kinds of organizations at (my studio alias) Estel, among other things.
Welcome to my personal blog, where I share some of my thoughts on web design, digital marketing, and everything in between.
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32
I’m turning 32 today. To practice having a heart of gratitude, I thought I’d make a list of 32 things I’m grateful for.
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My New Hobby
A couple of days ago the Google Play Store approved my first-ever mobile app, My Prayer Requests. I made it for my mom and it was inspired by my Bible counselor. Basically, it’s a prayer journal and community app.
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Biting Off More Than I Can Chew
I hit a milestone in my freelancing career this month. But at what cost? I took on too much work, and now I’m paying for it. I’m burnt out.
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Our Many Losses
I try not to think about Covid-19. I am blessed that I have that privilege. But as the pandemic continues, one cannot ignore the tremendous losses.
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High Value, Low Effort
For weeks now I kept getting Spam (that Gmail missed and went to my inbox) because I was too lazy to add reCAPTCHA keys to World Bites’ contact form. Just absolute laziness, when you think about how it took me only about 5 minutes yesterday to add one. It took mounting frustration day after day to get me to do it, but when you think about it, it’s so beneficial for something that is so easy to do.
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Rookie Mistakes
It’s been a week and a half since I launched Three Things Daily, and since then I’ve made a couple of rookie mistakes. This isn’t my first side project, and yet I made them. Kinda annoying.
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CXL Institute’s Digital Psychology and Persuasion Minidegree Review (Part 2 of 12)
This week, I finished the rest of the second course as well as the whole third and fourth (final) courses of the Psychology Foundations track.
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Introducing Three Things Daily
A few days ago I launched a new side project, Three Things Daily. Basically, it’s a public gratitude journal. Hopefully, it kicks off. But for me what’s important is that I enjoyed making it.
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CXL Institute’s Digital Psychology and Persuasion Minidegree Review (Part 1 of 12)
I believe in lifelong learning–I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my skills in web design and digital marketing. And when it came to learning providers, CXL Institute was an obvious choice.
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How I Think About Rest
I often wonder where my day went. So I recently started using an activity tracker, and I noticed something: I spend a lot of time resting.
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Adding Noise
I committed to writing a blog post every other day because I want to practice writing. One thing I constantly try to ask is whether I’m adding noise or not. As in, am I actually producing content that provides value to anyone? Or is it just noise?
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How to Add a "Share on Facebook" Link to Your Jekyll Posts
This site is powered by Jekyll and GitHub Pages and they’re both awesome. The best part is that they’re both completely free. I usually prefer to use no-code tools like Webflow when doing web design work, but for my personal site I thought I’d have fun with it and practice coding.
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Homepage vs. Landing Page: What's the Difference?
One of my biggest pet peeves as a web designer is when someone asks me to make a landing page when in fact what they want is a homepage, or vice versa. I don’t take it against them, but I usually feel too polite to explain it to them so I just let them keep calling it whatever they want to and then help them achieve what they really want to do. If I could, though, here’s what I’ll tell them:
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Notion for Freelancers: A Beginner’s Guide
I wrote this as a short writing task for two potential writing gigs (both were for tech verticals). I got both of them, and ended up accepting one of them. I thought I’d share this considering how popular Notion is right now. Personally, I use Bonsai for my freelancing business but I want to try and use Notion for my personal needs.
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On Digital Marketing Certifications and Food
I recently got my Google Analytics Individual Qualification. Yey, right? Two years ago, I got my Google Ads Search certification (now expired). Three years ago, I got my Hubspot Inbound Marketing and Hubspot Inbound certifications (both also now expired). I’ve always wanted to get the Google Analytics certification because this, along with the Google Ads Search and Hubspot Inbound ones, are considered some of the most reputable certifications for digital marketers to get. And mind you, they weren’t easy to get (at least for me).
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