Business & Marketing

As usual, many in the West are now doing something us Malaysians fail to show value. One magazine thinks bloggers will be the force which could turnover the Malaysia elections. But I’m not interested in this political stuff right now. I’m more concerned if bloggers will have a job space in future.

I’m more interested to observe when our job classifieds will list; Blogger Wanted. There are a few in Malaysia who are currently hiring bloggers to blog for them. And clients I’m working with repeatedly ask, “who will be responsible to blog?”. While I would always say, “You will need to appoint someone in the company” I believe we have a qualified amount of people in Malaysia.

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In the beginning of this month, Malaysia’s Advertlets online advertising company got themselves in a small mess. Their domain name (Advertlets.com) expired and wasn’t renewed causing massive chaos and retribution in the Malaysia blogosphere. As they struggled to recover, Nuffnang Malaysia rolled out an exclusive advertising program; Nuffnang Glitterati.

In short, Nuffnang publishers are given the opportunity to earn more and reap better benefits by joining this program. However, you may only qualify for the program if you publish only Nuffnang advertisements on your blog. When I read this, I pondered if this program really was about exclusivity or monopoly…or something else.

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My first ever email account created was with one of those email providers which gives you flexibility in selecting a unique domain. Something like; iheartyou.com and etc. Come to think of it, I can not remember my last email provider anymore.

Nonetheless, even at that time I actually had more than 1 email account. I signed up with Hotmail because I couldn’t get a Rocketmail account and then I signed up with Yahoo! mail. Later down the road, I found out about Gmail as a friend invited me to use their service. And today, Google Mail or Gmail for short is my number one choice as an email provider. However, here’s why I consider Google Mail the number one player of email providers.

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Everybody either wants to be a blog celebrity overnight or they want to make money via blogging. Hence, a large number of blogs with keywords; blogging, money, make more money, create money, generate money and the list goes on and on about…money. It’s not committing a cardinal sin to blog for money and to be proud of it.

But once your ego upgrades your level of personality, you’re a whole different person without realizing it. I was inspired a couple of days ago by Su Ann’s (Quaintly.net) entry; Being A Blogger Does Not Make You King Of The World. It wasn’t her strong opinionated personality which gave birth to this but the fact of how bloggers have changed their personality after becoming famous or gained celebrity status.

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Yup, that’s the one. I’ve constantly seen this particular advertisement on several bloggers blogs who are blogging for money. Hence, it got me thinking why are these bloggers utilizing this blog advertisement especially with such a large size? The number one peeve I have with this particular advertisement is its size. It’s huge!

Okie, huge might be an exaggeration but it does take more than three quarters of the content space. Not to mention this advertisement normally sits above the content. Which means readers actually are ‘forced’ to scan this advertisement before getting to your real content. Therefore I’m pondering at the moment, is it because these bloggers earn more money with this advertisement?

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I recently received the Inside Adsense newsletter sent by the good ol folks of Google on November 16, 2007. Besides introduction of the new Adsense design back in April, Google did other big things this year. They recently did a major Google Dance which left a huge number of local and international blogs affected in the PageRank – even me.

Yet, Google has put their foot in the door again. This time its to curb accidental clicks during the holiday season and future. If you’ve been a long time user of Google Adsense, you’ll realize most clicks may be generated either via click fraud or strategic placed ads. These strategic placed ads can be helpful or can be the cause of accidental clicks.

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I’ve always said the power of corporate blogging is an influential tool not only to move trends and markets but to improve your online sales or online sales leads. Surprisingly, I even found myself writing why a blog can boost business sales earlier this year.

Many are still afraid of how a blog is a double-edged sword to their business. When in fact, it all depends on which end you sharpen often. Is it the edge that gives you the increase in sales leads and conversions, or the end of being arrogant and not listening to what your commenters have to say about the product or service. With the proper blogging strategy, you’ll reap more than you can sow I tell you.

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Recently, a friend of mine shared the success rate of printed junk mail which lands in your resident mailbox is only 0.1%. It’s an awfully low rate if you ask me. If you sent out 1,000,000 resident junk mail the probability of you sealing a deal is only, 1000. Not to mention the habitat of Sumatran rhinos Honda and Nuffnang are trying hard to help rebuild.

Big horny animals aside (pun intended), this offline junk mail is online widely known as email spam. As countries like US and Australia too have instilled their CAN-SPAM act, Malaysia as usual is frolicking behind and many businesses are wasting their time spamming ‘customers’. While their outgoing number is very much higher than 1,000,000 their closing is less than 0.1%. Reason is simple, the email are ending up in the junk mail.

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The Bloggers Buff 2007 doesn’t count though it was called a workshop come forum come Malaysia bloggers gathering. Lately, I’ve noticed a growing number or trend of bloggers, internet marketers and entrepreneurs starting seminars and workshops.

You will more likely find them covering common topics like building a website, making money online, online marketing tips, learning how to use Flash and the list goes on. However, the most popular Internet seminar or workshop is to make money from blogs.

So what would participants expect to cover?

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What is the best method of harvesting data from your customers? Giving them free stuff for their name and email. That is why I want the Google notepad (some call it a notebook) Neowave is ‘bribing’ me with at the moment.

Why am I receiving their reward is not just because I want the Google notepad but because they want me to give my point of view on SEO E-commerce solutions. So this’ll be interesting and yes, if you hadn’t figured it out this is a Neowave Marketing Gimmick and plug.

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