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.

Looking for web host for your website? The web host service providers offer miscellaneous hosting plans for the customers in the different price packages. The dedicated server hosting is one of the finest hosting services which are well-managed by the hosting service providers. The small home business enterprisers may also get benefits of cheap hosting services of different service providers. The most exclusive features of bluehost are assessed by the different review writers of hosting companies.

Festive season + holiday season + school holiday are coming soon. There is nothing more happier other than having extra bucks to be spent for yourself, your kids or perhaps your spouse.

Kontera has the new offering. Register with them now and receive extra $25.. but wait, there is rules!! Reach 50k impressions on the first month to qualify for the offer.

The requirement seems quite high, but it’s not possible to be achieved, especially if you have a network of websites waiting to be monetized, or you just being dumb by Adsense (and you have totally lost looking for Adsense replacement). Kontera also 100% compliant with Adsense, so no worry about that, you can put them together.

At the end, happy holiday and don’t forget to earn additional income at the same time!!! You have nothing to lose (even if your earning does not qualify to receive payment on the first month)

If you receive you payment for your internet income in USD, you’ll notice that USD is converted less against other currencies such RM (Ringgit Malaysia) on the past few months. The same amount in USD few months back converted more than what I got now. The decreasing of about 4.3% might be little, but if you earn thousands per month, the different will be greater.

I’m creating graph below based on HSBC’s outstation cheque exchange rate for the past 4 month (when I started using their service). This might not a clear indication how USD performing are, but I’m trying to show how much you’ll earn from your pay cheque based on bank conversation rate (slightly different for each bank), since the concept of selling and buying is not used here

I still remember when 1 USD is equal to RM 3.8 sometimes back; the amount converted must be very well compared to the current situation. But I believe there is more positive impacts about this rather than the negatives. For consumer like me, obviously we’ll pay less when we shop online such as at Amazon and eBay or buy any digital product using our Paypal account.

Why USD weakening? I’ll let you answer this question if you happen to know it, I can guess but I’m not sure if it’s correct. Talking about USD, I found 1 interesting article from Bloomberg recently, about Supermodel Bundchen who refuses to be paid in USD. Interesting.. You can guess why.

To get accurate exchange rates history, you can get it from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM or Central Bank of Malaysia)

I’m currently in festive moods Before that, Happy Eid Mubarak to all my fellow Muslims all over the world and to all my readers. May peacefulness that we have lasted forever. I’m still on leave until next Wednesday, and currently spending my holiday at my hometown with my siblings and relatives, childhood friends, neighbor and everyone else. Its good to have meet and chat with everyone after 1 year full of non stop busy working life. I’m sometime thinking if we’re destined to works for life, or life for working.

I just moved back to KL last Wednesday, and our house still in a mess. No internet connection available temporarily, so I have to ‘visit’ my parent in-law’s house more often to get online. I have to wait approximately 2 weeks working days before I got everything in place.

OK, back to the main story today. If you’re Kontera publisher, you’ll have another option to get your payment through Paypal instead of cheque (or check) recently. This is indeed a good news since I have have to wait about 10 days to receive the cheque via postage, and another 30 days to get the cheque deposited to my account.

This option of payment however is not available from your kontera control panel. You’ll be contacted by them via email and you have to reply them to confirm your paypal account, ref number (given via the email) and your publisher name (given via email)

I believe this is something that wasn’t new to other countries, since I have read it before from several forums such as Digital Point.

Kontera is another alternatives to monetize your website/blog and it can be used together with adsense. If you haven’t register with them, do it now and start earning additional income from kontera