Monday, September 18, 2006

Books to Read

The recent Malaysian budget 2007 which was tabled on September 1, 2006, one day after the 49th Merdeka celebrations, brought some cheer to parents with school-going children, and the reading public. The Finance Minister, who is also the Prime Minister, announced an increased in tax relief of RM300 (from RM700 to RM1000)for purchases of books


I've already lined up some books to purchase:

Best of Blogs
Authors: Peter Kuhns and Adrienne Crew

Publisher: Que Publishing, 320 pages

According to the reviewer , the book should be called "Best of American Blogs" as it features blogs from the United States. "Perhaps somebody should write the Best of Malaysian Blogs sometime in the future. I sense a need" she concludes.

Dare I take the challenge?


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Website Design - 6 common mistakes

Six Common Mistakes In Website Design That Kill Your Online Business


What are some of the things to avoid in your website?


1. A slow loading website.

There is nothing more irritating than a website that takes forever to load. Granted that most internet users these days have high speed connections, a great percentage are still hooked up to the World Wide Web via slower 56K access. This percentage should not be taken for granted. In building a website, try to stay away from the humongous graphic files. You don't need high number of pixels, fancy movies or flash animation, catchy music. You need a website that will deliver the information it promises at an instantaneous rate, and for this reason, you have to choose functionality over design.

2. A navigation system that is very difficult to understand.

Make it easy for visitors to explore your website. If your menu bar is too complicated, you’ll just end up driving away a lot of your visitors. You don’t want your visitors to get stuck in just one page. Your pages must be interlinked in a logical way, and this connection should be easily navigable through an intuitive interface that even a 7 year old will be able to understand. Again, this is a matter of functionality over design. Place your navigation links either at the top of the page right below the header, or at either side of the page in a separate column. This is where your visitors’ eyes will wander once they want to discover the other pages in your website.

3. Low quality content.

Content is king on the internet. People log online to find information they need, and information is conveyed through your content. If your content is poorly written, who will have the patience to read the same? If your content is not unique, why will people choose your website over others? There are two requisites for good quality content: excellent presentation and originality. Minus either of this, your entire website will be in jeopardy.

4. Poor choice of keywords to focus on.

Keywords drive traffic to your website. Keywords are the terms that people search for when they’re looking for information. If you targeted the right keywords, quality visitors will come aplenty. If you targeted the wrong keywords, visitors will be scarce. So make sure you discover the right keywords even before you start building your website.

5. Cookie cutter websites.

If your website lacks originality - shares the same layout and boasting of the same content as others, your visitors will question its credibility. Make your website unique. Search engines penalize duplicate content, and your website will have a lower position in the search engine results.

6. A website that lacks focus.

Focus is key in designing a website. Topics in the website should be related. Why would visitors who are interested with dogs be interested with astronomy? There’s no connection between the two subjects.


New keyword : WII FM : What's In It - For Me. Every visitor switches on to this radio station when they land on your page, so give them a reason to stay longer.


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Sunday, September 17, 2006

4 steps to successful internet business

Presented by Derek Gehl - in a preview at a leading hotel in Subang Jaya

This blog is my online diary. In the process of doing indepth research on internet marketing, I take every opportunity to attend the free seminar or previews in town, so the least I can do is to pen down the important notes that the presenter dish out - so that I can refer to it again and again. One more thing, I made this blog my default homepage, so I will see it whenever I switched on the laptop

Actually if you have attended enough seminars, the information dished out is "about the same". What differs is the RESULTS from the ACTIONS taken.

Readers, have you attended (paid or unpaid) seminars and religiously taken notes, only to stash the notes (written on the hotel's stationery) in the drawer, or briefcase? I have been guilty of it so many times. When I discovered blogging I found my answer!

1. Use your existing hobbies or experience to find a lucrative business or product to sell online.

Before you plunge into the online business (for that matter, it also applies to offline business), you need to do a research on the supply and demand for your chosen product or service.

In the online business, demand can be defined as the number of people keying in a particular word, or groups of words (called keywords) onto the search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and many more. Supply is the number of websites that have already been created to meet the demand.

When you find that the demand exceeds the supply (pure economic terms) for the product or service that you have in mind, then you are in business! It is time to find a creative solution to the problems that people have.

2. Design a website to convert visitors to lifetime customers.

The website is your storefront. It must be easy to navigate. It must give the visitors the information he/she wants when they entered the keywords in the search engine, and is redirected to your website. You have 10 seconds to impress the visitor. It must have a compellng headline and credible reasons why they should buy your advice or product.


3. Drive a flood of qualified buyers to your website

Vistors to your website (storefront) are either referred by others - friends, associates or affiliates, or they may have accidentally stumbled onto your website when they do a search. In order to sustain your business, you must promote the website - by driving qualified visitors to it. Blogging, banner ads and newsletters and ezines are some of the methods. There are many!


4. Put it on Auto pilot!

Use the right technology to automate the sales (ordering and delivery) process. Spend your time to promote and market your website. Just like the traditional offline business. Work ON the business, not IN the business.


That's it. Simple Isn't it?

Now to put in action.


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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Article Marketing - What and Why

Article marketing has always been hailed as online advertising’s greatest strategy.

Writing your own articles is inexpensive. Submission to the many articles directories wouldn’t cost a single penny. You’d be planting seeds that you could benefit from for many years. For as long as the article directories exist, your article/s would be stored, and with them would be your links.

Article marketing does seem like the greatest promotional technique invented for the internet utilised by novice and veteran online businessman. Whether their enterprises are mere startups, or whether they have established a profitable brand for themselves, article marketing is always at the forefront of their advertising campaigns.


Concerns about Article Marketing

If you submit an article to 100 directories, and publish the very same article in your website, will your website be penalized?

The short answer: no.

What will be penalized would be the pages housed in the article directories. Your website will be spared. This is the reason why most article directories, with the notable exception of www.isnare.com when it comes to MSN results (which can be attributed to alternative SEO techniques that website is pursuing specifically for MSN’s search engine), fare quite poorly in SERPs. Run a search for any keyword. Will article directory pages appear in the first hundred or so pages? Most probably, they won’t.


What good is article marketing for?

Article marketing should not be used for direct traffic generation - the traffic will by no means be substantial for any form of online business.

Article marketing is great for building your link popularity, and link popularity is great for increasing your website’s page rank.

The higher your website’s page rank, the higher its position will be in the search engine results pages.

With your article submissions, you’d be able to increase your website’s number of back links on the internet. This would make it easy for search engine spiders, especially Google’s, to find, index and fetch your website for relevant search queries.

Additionally, article directories like www.ezinearticles.com , are favorites of webmasters and eZine publishers. If they will pick up your article/s for publication in their own channels, you’d be able to expose your website to whole new audience, and more importantly, you’d be able to increase the number of your back links even more.

This is the true power of article marketing.


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Monday, September 11, 2006

Mind Your Own Business

Mind Your own Business!: "When is the right time during the year to start using MYOB?
Any time. MYOB has been designed in such a way that it really doesn't matter when you start using it. The opening balances can be entered at any time so you are not forced to enter them before you can start using any of MYOB's features, for example invoicing or stock control. Obviously the more information you enter at the outset the more you'll get from MYOB We recommend that if you're using the Chequebook, you enter the opening cash book balance in the bank account so that bank reconciliations can be done from the outset. To print statements you'll need to at least enter opening debtor balance"

Huh? What has this article got to do about internet marketing? Actually I was learning how to create a link to this blog from another website. Anyway, if you are in business, the next logical tool to invest in is an accounting software to help you track the income and the expenses, and MYOB is just the right choice.


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Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn

I am always mindful not to judge things too quickly. Last weekend the local paper ran 2 stories about why you should not make judgements on events that transpired just based on 1 event alone. To read the story written by the reader, click here. and here .

I tell the same stories in my own words:

Story 1

An old man had a beautiful white horse, which he won't part with even when offered huge sums of money.

When the horse was found missing from its stable one morning, the villagers all said "What a misfortune. You would have been better off if you had sold it". The old man said "I don't know whether it's a misfortune or blessing. The fact is the horse is not in the stable. Everything else is judgement".

2 weeks later the horse returned, with a dozen wild horses. Again the people gathered and said " You are right. It was not a misfortune. Indeed it is a blessing".
The old mand replied "Who knows whether it is a blessing or not? Just say that the horse is back".

The old man's son began to train the wild horses. But 1 week later, the son fell from a horse and broke his legs. Again the people gathered and said, "It is a misfortune indeed. Your son has lost the use of his legs. You are now poorer than before". The old man said "You are obsessed about passing judgement. Don't go that far. Say only that my son has broken his legs. Life comprises of fragments and you don't get more than you can handle".

A few months later, it happened that the country went to war. All young men in the village were conscripted by military. The old man's son was spared because of his crippled leg. The villagers went to see the old man and said "Your son's fall has proven to be a blessing. You son may be a cripple but he is still with you. Our sons are gone forever".

The old man said "Don't go on judging. Just say that your sons were forced to join the army while mine was not. Only God knows whether this is a blessing or not".


Story 2

A man sent his 4 sons to look at a pear tree that was a great distance away. When they had all gone and came back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.

1st son, who went in winter said : the tree is ugly, bent and twisted.

2nd son, who went in spring said : the tree is covered with green buds and full of prime.

3rd son, who went in summer, said : the tree is laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked beautiful. It was the most graceful thing he had seen.

4th son, who went in autumn, said : it was ripe and drooping with fruits and full of life and fulfilment.

The man then explained that they were all right, because they had each seen only one season of the tree's life. In this way, you cannot judge a person or your life by one season only.

If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of spring, the beauty of summer, and the fulfilment of autumn. Don't let the pain in one season cancel out the joy of all the others.

Something I have to learn also.


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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Perils of Blogging

Several Malaysian blogs are in the running for the Best Malaysian Blog awards for 2006/2007. Would be interesting to find out how Malaysian readers pick out the "best" sites.

I guess one man's meat is another man's poison.

Several of the nominated blogs write on everyday happenings in the bloggers personal lives. There is a cautionary article on Perils of Blogging that bloggers might want to take note of before they let the entire world into their personal lives.

My humble opinion only.

And another thing, their readers reply in SMS-speak. I guess I don't belong to the SMS generation!


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