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Please donate for flood victim

I’m taking a brief break from posting about how to achieve online visibility. For those who’re not aware of the recent floods (and how bad it is) in Kelantan, Pahang and Johor of Malaysia, I would like to plead for donation to them. Please, they’re really in need. I know we have our government and big corporations, but our contribution to our fellow Malaysian is really needed as well.

I have experienced flood every year when I was a kid back in 1980s, I know how bad it it . Every RM that you donate is priceless.

Imagine you’re in their situation, what would you expect from your fellow Malaysians? You’ll hope someone will rescue you, give you food, and help you start a new life, after all that you have got, your effort so far, and your income be submerged and destroyed by flood. I know it’s hard to imagine that, but believe me, your effort won’t gone away unnoticed by God.

Sentence courtesy of Maybank2u

People all over Malaysia has been badly hit by the latest flood, forcing thousands to abandon their homes, with crops and belongings destroyed, transportation links, power lines and water supply cut off. And in this time of need, flood relief stations have been opened to house the victims and provide much-needed aid.

Maybank2u.com continues with its humanitarian and charitable initiatives by offering an online channel for contributions to TV3′s Tabung Bantuan Banjir.

Let us all help fellow Malaysians – our neighbours, friends and families.

Send your donations to Maybank2u.com

Thank you for your kindness. May God bless and reward your kindness.

Admin 18 December 2007 Promotion 2 Comments

top trends in search in 2007 – part 2

2104263784 4cfe29e1c4 m top trends in search in 2007 part 2

I have posted about top trend in search in 2007 a few weeks back. On that post, I talked about Yahoo’s top trend in search in 2007 and Google’s fastest growing search terms. Read it here if you missed my post.

Last Friday, ask.com released its top 10 search on 2007. Top of the list is MySpace. On Google’s list, MySpace sits on # 7, however, it’s not listed on any of Yahoos’ top search categories

Among the top 10 keywords, it seems that ‘area codes’ is something that I can’t hardly imagine to be ranked on # 5, if you could think of any niche topic or blogging about it, I bet it could be an instant hit

1. MySpace
2. Dictionary
3. Google
4. Themes
5. Area Codes
6. Cars
7. Weather
8. Games
9. Song Lyrics
10. Movies

Ask.com also provides weekly top search which is available for everyone.

If you’re keen to start any internet related business, this is one of the areas that I suggest you to look at. Do keep it in mind that, Internet is moving very fast, and that the list could change anytime, so what should you do to get updated with latest top search or trend? Stay alert, and most importantly, and keep reading this blog.

maiardz 17 December 2007 SEO & Webmaster 6 Comments

advertise in blogs or websites?

2115356156 2ea5f79424 m advertise in blogs or websites?

I read John Chow’s blog even before he’s become this popular (his RSS subscriber around 1k), and I like it even more recently, with his evil ideas and also because he earns more than 10K per month by using his evil idea to earn money online. And now, I think there is another reason why me (and perhaps other fellow Malaysian) should read John Chow since he has promoted Malaysia indirectly with his recent post in his blog.

Maybe you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, what is the relation between John Chow and Malaysia?? Ok, this is something to do with our Visit Malaysia 2007 campaign which is still going on. With this campaign extended until August 2008, I can say that this is an additional bonus and exposure to Malaysia, on top of current promotion that Ministry of Tourism has been doing. Personally, I can see that Malaysia is not that well known to western or European countries. Perhaps Penang, KL or Langkawi has more exposure than Malaysia itself (I have peers who thinks Penang is a country, lol).

What I’m thinking here is, other than spending millions of RM on advertisement on mainstream websites, why not we consider other medium of advertisement such as to insert the review in popular blogs such as John Chow, Shoemoney, Problogger, text link ads, pay per post and etc.

Taking John Chow as example, his blog has over 300k page views and 200k visitors per month, and he has 14K RSS readers, and with only USD400 to get him to review or post anything about Malaysia, the post then will be available there forever, plus it is accessible via other mediums as well such as RSS and mailing lists. And don’t forget, search engine is indexing blog post faster than websites.

Other than making reviews, blog also offers banner ads, where the price can vary from $400 – 500 per month. Some of this ads also will be displayed in the RSS feed. Nowadays, bloggers no longer move alone, they have formed a network of blogs and websites, so this kind of advertisement is no longer bounded in one blog, but it could spread across the network that they had formed.

How about advertising on search engines? Google is using combination of Adwords and Adsense whereby the advertiser is bidding for the price of the keyword, and while Yahoo has the same type of ads, it still has the banner ads displayed on the their services such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail. So let’s say I take Yahoo as an example here, the rate for advertisement under travel category is around $49.00 – $106.50 CPM. So let’s say for 300K impressions, it translates to around $14.7K – $39.95k. That is expensive.

Ok, I take another example of advertisement on a more targeted audience related to tourism. I take Travelocity, one of the leading travel portal and e-commerce on the net. The
rate varies from $25-$55 CPM depending on the ads size and type. It translates to 7.5K – 16.5K for 300K more. Still, it’s more expensive than blogs, however it is cheaper than search engines and the audience targeted is more specific to travelers.

This is just my personal basic comparison of advertisement on blogs, search engines and travel portals. In terms of clicks, I’m not sure which one is better, but blog has audiences consisting more of the blogger community itself who is Ad blind, whereas, the advertisement on Yahoo is perhaps on Yahoo services such as Yahoo Travel or Yahoo Mail, and advertising on Travelocity is targeted to travelers.

However, the main agenda of such ads is to give more awareness of such events, and not mainly about clicking the ads alone. And don’t forget, I’m talking about banner ads on websites VS review/banner ads on blogs and not the the contextual ads. Contextual advertising might be more effective here but it depends on how good you’re planning your advertisement.

I still believe that the potential of advertisement in blogs is bigger than ever. With the price being cheaper than those advertisements on big corporations, your ads will have more exposure not only on the search engines, but on RSS as well as mailing lists.

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Admin 16 December 2007 Make money online 2 Comments

Yahoo shortcut plugin make your blog posting easier

2100757869 233318b2e8 m Yahoo shortcut plugin make your blog posting easier

Yahoo had recently released the plugin (is it their first plugin?) for wordpress called Yahoo Shortcut . So how does it work? The concept of this plugin is, as you type in your post, the plugin will look for any picture from Flickr , places, companies, products, people and much etc. If it finds any relevant contents or videos, the matched keyword will be underlined and you will be able to decide whether you want to display them or not

If you’re like me who’d love to have a least 1 image on each of my post (to make them more interesting), this plugin is definitely for you. So in case if you’re in hurry, but you want to publish your post ASAP, you don’t have to worry to find suitable image anymore, edit them, upload to your server and embed in your post. With Yahoo Shortcut, you will be able to control them from within your wordpress

This post is the first time I’m experimenting with this plugin after installing it few days ago. It seems that none of my keyword matches with any images from Flickr and other shortcut listed in their service, but there is a menu which allows you to choose the picture manually from flickr. See available shortcut below, which part of current Yahoo services

Flickr Photos
Maps
Financial Information
Products
Autos
News
Web Search

This is how your post might look like before and after using Yahoo Shortcut

yahooshortcut3 Yahoo shortcut plugin make your blog posting easier

What I notice when I’m typing this post directly on wordpress editor is, it seems that there is a slight lagging on the words typed to appear (it could be my wireless internet connection, but i had never encountered this kind of lagging before) on the editor, but it is understandable since the plugin is working real time in matching your keyword with the shortcuts. But this problem is gone when I use wired LAN to connect to internet, so this must be due to my internet connection speed

The most interesting part is (not related to this plugin function) , there are also free tshirt for the first 500 bloggers who install this plugin, but this is for US residents only. Hopefully, when Yahoo releases another plugin for wordpress in future, they will include those outside of the US since most of wordpress traffic comes from there

Watch the video to have a better understanding on how it works. You’ll love it (hopefully). 1 more thing, this plugin is for wordpress only

Admin 15 December 2007 Wordpress 14 Comments

Pictures of Dell Direct Store

dell1 Pictures of Dell Direct Storedell2 Pictures of Dell Direct Store

Finally, I manage to get the Dell so called Direct Store’s pictures from my friend. On my post earlier, I have mentioned about the opening of Dell’s Direct Store in Mid Valley Megamall shopping complex.

I’m not sure if this is part of Dell’s channel strategy, since the store itself bear the Dell logo as well as Intel. It could be the collaboration between Dell and Intel to showcase their product to the public. I doubt there are AMD’s powered notebooks/desktops displayed there.

Judging on the size of the store, it seems that the store is not that huge and does not showcasing full array of Dell’s product. I’m actually expecting something similar (or almost) to Mac Store nearby

If Dell is looking somewhere to build similar store, I believe Low Yat Plaza located at Kuala Lumpur’s so called Golden Triangle is the best. It is the largest IT center in Malaysia. I do visit there quite often, and I can see that there are large crowd looking for computer related items.

Good luck Dell!!

Admin 14 December 2007 Dell 13 Comments
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