Malaysia Inland Revenue Board (IRB) Audits Bloggers

My, oh, my. Imagine answering the door with 2 men wearing round shaped glasses, suited up, carrying briefcases, waltzing into your home. Or, a bright table lamp shone upon you while you only hear questions, within a dark room.

Okay, maybe the IRB don’t do those things. But they sure will fish your file out, if they found you under declaring a large revenue. How large? Well, safe to say, an average monthly salary.

If you read TheStar today, RedMummy was informed by the Malaysia Inland Revenue Board (IRB) about this.

And quoting the article, here’s another type of online income which is taxable.

An IRB spokesman said online businesses including via Facebook were bound by the Income Tax Act 1967 and their income were taxable just like fixed income.

Meaning, blogshop owners or the ones who sell goods via Facebook picture tagging spam, also are bounded by the same law.

But if I were to play the devil’s advocate, you may be lucky to be not picked out, if you’re very low profile.

How Effective Post Titles Affect Your Blog?

Currently, I’m doing research for a project and I’ve been asking for websites which accentuate colors. And an online friend; hinching, recommended me Devlounge on Twitter.

@dannyfoo try devlounge.com and have a look at their Friday focus posts. I think there was a colour theme a while back.

Well, it was a great recommendation and I found some ideal stuff to include into my mood board from their Friday Focus archives.

While I was browsing, I noticed their post titles changed from having a date with context to only the date of the issue. What’s the difference? Have a look a for yourself.

If you were browsing the archives of a blog and the post titles didn’t summarize the post content, imagine what you’d have to do. Well, next thing I knew, I had to scan the truncated post excerpts and seriously, that’s time consuming.

So having an effective post title does not only affect SEO. It fundamentally also affects your users who are looking for something.

WordPress WP Greet Box Plugin Downloaded and Activated

The WordPress WP Greet Box plugin creates an automated greeting message to your referred visitors when they read your blog. Yes, referred visitors from search engines, Delicious, Digg and a whole lot more. After activating the plugin, it supports up to 30+ referrer sources.

If you’re a new or existing reader to my blog, you’ll now see an additional panel below the post title.

The other advantageous benefit of this plugin is you may enable an optional close button to this message. And note, this ain’t no annoying popup window. I’d say it disrupts reading glow only a teensy tiny bit.

Other than this plugin, I’d like to note I also find one which highlights the keywords you used in order to reach a blog post very helpful. It quickly drops you hints whether or not the referred search result was accurate.

In addition to the above, blogs (or websites) with multiple authors should have an author introduction below the article. Kind of like this one from Smashing Magazine.

The profile not only would tell a reader who is the author but why, what, where and how this author could’ve been selected to write for you or your organization.

Have you installed or done any of the above for your blog yet?

The Meaning of A Food Blogger

Sometime back, I was inspired by an article written about a Singaporean food blogger; ladyironchef, by Blogpress. The part of the interview which inspired me was when he said this:

I do accept invitations for an invited food tasting session, but such tastings are non-obligatory; I reserve the right not to blog about it, and the restaurant has no say over whatever I wrote. The reviews written for food tasting sessions will only be the ones I enjoyed. Therefore, I will always accept invitations that are sincere and come with no strings-attached, as well restaurants that have a particular theme or cuisine that interest me.

In that paragraph, I felt the passion poured in as a food blogger. Thus, I sent out an email to other food bloggers – Malaysian and Singaporean. I wanted to see if everyone’s love of food was as strong and their etiquette of being a food blogger was as real. So I asked these food bloggers 1 question:

What does being a food blogger mean to you?

A Lil’ Fat Monkey

Being a food blogger gives me an avenue to express my love for good food and share the stories surrounding food with likeminded people and also curious visitors.

KY Speaks

Food blogger – some dude who has a blog and writes about food! Doesn’t really have any other definition though. Food bloggers aren’t exactly “role models”, a lot of us do it cos we love to eat! and sometimes get to free load, hohooho.

A Whiff of Lemongrass

It’s about sharing my food finds with my readers, and about being true to myself while I’m doing it.  It’s about keeping an account of places I’ve visited, people I’ve dined with, emotions I’ve experienced and culinary gems I’ve discovered.

Kampung Boy City Gal

We always believe that food is the center of pleasure, culture, and community which binds people together. This is why it ignited our interest in starting a food blog in year 2005. Throughout our two years in food blogging, we continuously search high (for gourmet treat) and low (for alley specialties) for FOOD.

Being a food blogger means a lot to us. Our passion for food blogging is fueled by food, the glorious food. We also love  food photography which most food bloggers would jokingly refer it to food porn. And of course the perks of food blogging would be making new friends along the way and getting positive comments from readers.

VKeong

I feel the importance of food bloggers are their opinions, as well as their own experience. Articles in the newspaper and Internet are usually biased and tend to write good things about the restaurants they are featuring.

But leh, even food bloggers’ words cannot be fully trusted nowadays. I know some who deliberately write only good things in return for free meals.

Babe In The City KL

For me, it’s very simple. I blog for myself first in order for me to note down where and what I’ve eaten at a particular place. Blogging down food I cooked is a reference to me as it’s hard to sieve thru tonnes of recipes I have. Being a blogger in particular food, I have to be responsible with what I post to the public hence I’ll have to self censor many times to avoid causing grievances or unfair statement made.

Buurps

Food blogger – about sharing what you eat. Some people share the good, some share the bad, some share both.

Unfortunately there are people who blog about food but goes around demanding FREE food for article to be written. That doesn’t make them any less a food blogger but I find it unethical and such acts do give food bloggers a bad name.

To me – it’s all about sharing. It’s not about the FREE makan. I get invites from time to time but more often my articles are out of my own pocket money because I love to try food and I love to share the places I think good (along with the passion to shoot and to write of course).

In fact “free makan” is not always the best way to go, sure it’s free but then that also means you get to sample their BEST and see the workers at BEST BEHAVIOR. Readers could end up being mislead, which in the end it could end up hurting your image as it looks like you’re just sugar-coating everything.

Lady Iron Chef

You know, the strange thing is when i started my blog, it wasn’t so much to be a food blog but somehow it slowly evolved to what it is today. It will always start with a common goal, to share the delicious food that you have with your friends and everyone. When i started it initially, it was more of a journal to record down and let my friends know where I have eaten. It’s still the same now, except I’m sharing them with a lot more people who enjoy reading my blog.

Like what I’ve mentioned in that interview, there’s no secret to food blogging, always be true to yourself and write from the heart. Learn
how your camera works, take good photographs of food and write in a
descriptive manner so that others can taste the food through your words.

Many people think that writing a food blog is easy, but they have no idea about the hard work and effort put into the blog. During the past year, there are so many new food blogs; only time will tell if they will last. But I think people shouldn’t be doing it because they want to get popular. Blog with passion, enjoy what you are doing, and naturally people will want to come and read your blog.

At the end of the day, it is about how much you really love the blog, the commitment and effort put into the blog is no less than a full time job. Taking photos, choosing and editing them, drafting the article – everything takes a lot of time. Personally I blog once every two days, or about 3-4 times a week. I believe it will be impossible if one is doing it for different reasons other than having a passion for it. My greatest satisfaction lies in getting people hungry, and I find joy in doing that. And yes, I think that’s what being a food blogger means to me.

Told you, passion.

From the list of food bloggers above, if there’s one thing driving them forward, its the love of food. Some swear to tell the truth of it, some choose to not publish in respect of quality and some who may still think, it’s only a meal.

Writing about food as a blogger isn’t just about saying, “it tasted nice”. It’s about being able to communicate the taste and food experience in words which you’re sharing whole heartedly to others.

It’s about inspiring them to eat and have a mouthful of the food which you have tasted. Imagining the succulent and juicy medium rare ribeye steak with a tinge of English mustard sliding on your tastebuds and being swallowed down your throat, with some chewing of course.

But seriously, if you want to be a food blogger. Get inspired by these other foodies. Feel their passion and share your own.

P.S.: I’m hungry now. LOL!

The 3 Most Common WordPress Theme Types

Before you ask, why only WordPress? It’s because I’ve only been following, researching and observing WordPress ever since I transitioned from being a MovableType to WordPress. Hence, this is my observation of the 3 most common wordpress theme types.

Type 1: Free WordPress themes

Image credits: Mariesol

WordPress has made itself super popular because of the many downloadable themes you can find all around the Web. Now, not only do designers/developers create WordPress themes from scratch to be released free.

But, other designers/developers modify and repackage these themes as something brand new as a free download. Some of them will credit the original theme author but some claim it as their own.

Type 2: Paid or Premium WordPress themes

The word premium is now commonly used by WordPress theme designers/developers to tell users they’re selling a WordPress theme. Premium WordPress themes have matured from only custom designed WordPress themes to flexible multi-optional WordPress themes.

Many WordPress theme designers/developers now like Woo Themes, Revolution Theme, Elegant Themes, Headway Themes, Thesis and the list goes on, have carved a new market for themselves.

Type 3: Custom WordPress themes

Image credits: Boopsiedaisy

The bridge between premium WordPress themes and custom WordPress themes is becoming shorter. Some premium WordPress themes do come with layout editors, but even these editors aren’t enough to fulfill the customization needs sometimes.

Which is why, some premium WordPress theme designers/developers also offer custom WordPress theme design services. And why not? They’ve already got a library of frameworks, scripts and good reputation to boot.

Wow, so what type of WordPress theme should I get?

It’s difficult to recommend the ideal choice. The best advice I’d give is find one which suits your needs, and budget. It’s not wrong starting with a free WordPress theme because it’s the content which matters. From there, you can look into either a premium WordPress theme or a custom WordPress there.

But if you do invest in a premium WordPress theme, always ensure they’ve got great support. Otherwise, you could be left in the dark part of the way.