Topo is the 2nd most commentator on zakiyamani.com, and as part of the threesome contest‘s reward, I’ll review his blog for free. Few days ago, I have released my review on earncent and vangardx. I hope they like it, yeah!!

Mylifeastopo is the personal Topo’s personal blog. Currently, it was hosted on fwenz.info which is one of the free blog host. But he has plan to have his own hosted blog somewhere. That is one of the reason why this review is delayed (other than I’m busy working on other stuff)

His blog is relatively new, whereby the first post was published on 6th Jan 2008. Unlike Titan who has graduated, Topo is still studying at Teknikel Malaysia Melaka (UTEM). He is still single, but unfortunately not available (why??) Looks like most IM/bloggers are still single, which I believe is due to their too much commitment and time spent on their project! Hahaha, don’t wait too long dude.

The theme
I admire the green theme, 3 columns with 2 sidebars on the left and right side, similar to what I have in this blog except that it has an additional section below the header. My personal favorite design. The RSS reader and search buttons are well placed and clearly visible at first glance. Nothing to comment about that.

I subscribed to the feed so I can read the post in 1 shot. Luckily he has full feed (except for certain posts), so I can read the blog’s content peacefully without any hassle to go back and forth to the blog to get more details.

Contents
The contents are more about personal stuffs, a little bit about making money online on the technical things such as SQL server and Adobe Photoshop. I don’t have any special niche or topic to concentrate on as well, but as long as readers enjoy what you write, that shouldn’t be a problem to you.

In this post, he mentions that his traffic is like roller coaster. I think you know why. The day you have a new post, your traffic will be high and the other way round when there is no new post. Google loves websites which is updated frequently, and it will index this website frequently as well. The key here is to write consistently and go deeper on what you’re talking about. If you haven’t read Problogger, you might want to take a look at this blog, which provides tonnes of resources related to blogging.

Make money online
It is almost free from advertisement. So far Topo monetize the blog using Nuffnang and private ads only. 1 thing that I would suggest is to put the ads on the right sidebar, since that area has more visibility to your readers

There are more rooms for improvement
As long as Topo is willing to learn more, I don’t see why he can’t be successful in future. But first, do write consistently. I do write some posts in the past about blogging ideas which you can find here and here, and you’re most welcome to apply it on your convenience.

Topo has new home!!
Topo finally has his own hosted blog, Topotato after blogging on a free platform for quite sometime. Unfortunately the web hosting is not reliable, and causing his blog inaccessible for the last couple of days. If you ask me which company should you choose, my answer is serverfreak. No intention to promote them, but I’m amazed with how fast their respond to your support ticket. Anyway Topo, congrats for having a new blog.

Syam, Syamsularif or vangard refers to same person. I don’t think I have to introduce him, he is quite famous in Malaysian blog-sphere. In case if you’re new, Syam is a student of University PertahananNasional (Defence National Unversity), Malaysia. Zakiyamani call him romeo, I’m not sure why, but I think I can guess, hehe..

He is behaving ‘insanely’ recently when he became the top commentator on all 3 blogs who held threesome contest. I’m reviewing his blog since he is the top commentator on zakiyamani.com. He too became the top commentator in azwahadzree and 2nd top commentator on blogjer.com. He is so determined to achieve this feat until his PC spoilt it!!

Background
I’m not sure why the blog’s title is syamsulariff.com and the URL is vangardx.net, I don’t seem to find the answer there. Opening Syamsulariff.com will redirect to vangardx too. Ok, forget about that.

Registered on 7th Jun 2006, Vangardx has solid Alexa rank which currently stands at 88k (and keeps on getting better from day to day). If he can maintain this speed, Syamsulariff definitely will become celebrity blogger one day (in-line with Kenny Sia).

Themes
On the theme’s design, it looks clean and simple, but it’s not a valid html though. Hehe, don’t be mad Syam, mine is not a valid HTML too after adding too many plugins. The main menus are neatly arranged on top of the header.

He is currently on look out for a new WordPress themes, so if you want to sponsor or designing new theme for him, this is the time. You know what you could get with high traffic blog like this.

Content
Syam posts very frequently, sometime 4-7 posts per day. I won’t be able to go through all posts, it is dang a lot man!! The RSS feed only offers partial feed, so I have to click on ‘more’ to get to know the details (thumbs down). The contents, are covering the latest world’s issue, what’s HOT including gossips, entertainment, artist, AF, political news, little bit SEO, make money online and not forgetting Military news. Based on the posts, I can say that he is an opportunist and fast too, whenever there is HOT issue, he’ll be among the first to post and the result, his blog will be flooded with visitors, this is one of the example, see how he did it? I’ll only dream to get that amount, hohoho. At one time he even got 200 visitors, amazing!! Thanks to Sufiah!!

Certain posts is quite short, and occasionally the message does not reach the audience. I think this is one area that Syam could improve, quality is important other than quantity. He is blogging in English, although there are grammatical and typo error occasionally. That’s fine, in fact, he is better than those who’d just keep talking about to enhance the English usage like our Education Ministry, but now there’s nothing. For me, as long as the reader understands what he is trying to say, he is successful in his mission.

With traffic flowing like water, I believe he earns a substantial income. He has Nuffnang + Adsense + private ads which could reach over MYR200-300 per-month. But he never reveals his income, so Syam, would you reveal how much you earn? With the traffic that he enjoys, no wonder why Serverfreak is sponsoring the webhosting.

In the end..
If you’re looking for gossips, politic or entertainment news, this blog is perfectly for you. Although there are posts about WordPress, tech and making money online, the entertainment posts are the ones that is dominating the traffic. This is what we call niche.

Erncent.com is not actually earning cents, but USD to be exact. The author, more known as Titan, is the third top commentator on chemical genius blogger, zakiyamani.com which is part of the threesome contest. To be frank, I rarely visit or read his blog before, but for this ‘special’ review, I had gone through almost all posts available from his feed to know more on what Titan wrote (I’ll tell you why I missed some of the posts in the detail below)

Author and domain
I’m struggling to find who he is from the blog, at a glance, I can’t find where is the ‘about’ page. It turns out that it is on ‘Misi2008′ page. Before that, this blog is written 100% in Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa, so in case if you readers need to know about certain post, I’m here to help you. A brief look on the domain, WHOIS recorded that, earncent.com was registered on 15-Jul-2007, which means it has  been around for quite sometime and only 2 months younger than blogjer.com

Titan had just unofficially graduated from Universiti Malaysia Sawarak (UMS), have yet to receive his scroll which is due on 2-4 Sept 2008. Still 23 years old (prime time) and is still single and available. He plans to get married after he got his 1st million (WoW!!). Are you gonna stay bachelor forever if you fail to get that amount??

Physical appearance
Design wise, earncents.com uses 3 column themes, with 2 right sidebars which is very popular nowadays. Both right sidebars are full with advertisement, widget, banner and affiliate link. For a long run, I won’t really recommend to have too much ads. First of all, it won’t make your blog looks ‘professional’ and occasionally can make your first time visitor to visit only once. Secondly, over the time, when the number of readers grows bigger, widgets and ads can slow your blog loading time significantly.

Top recent comment is placed on top of the recent post, which I feel is inappropriate since most visitors are looking for the recent post, not comments.

RSS button is placed on the right place, and it has both subscribing option via email or readers. With 51 readers, I feel it is too early to show how many your readers are. I know certain well known bloggers recommended to hide your subscribers until you have at least 100 or 500 readers, but hey, this just some guide which not necessarily true

One more thing is, the feed does not display full feed, whereby I prefer full feed rather than partial feed to keep me updated with the hundreds feed  available in my  feed reader

Content
The oldest post that I can access from RSS reader is back to last 27 March, and there is only 11 posts available from the reader. But I suppose there are older posts, since the older post is about
answering other blogger’s tag, which means if this is his first post, why in the world would other bloggers tag him in the first place. Moreover, each posts has more than 20 comments (means he has many loyal reader), so I believe there are other posts before this that I have no idea on how to access it. I just discovered that it has navigation link at the bottom of the page, WOW it has 34 pages and the oldest post is back to 16 July 2007. He is quite ‘veteran’ blogger, hehe

1 thing worth to mention here  is that, earncent has his own top commentator contest, which I found only when I received an email from Titan. (That means my theory about other older post on previous paragraph is correct). The contest called Comment Master Duo offering quite
lucrative reward, so while waiting for another round of threesome contest, why not you join earncent.com contest. Btw Titan, you really need to fix the feed setting..

Most of the posts are talking about how to make money online, especially affiliate program. In fact, I’ve never heard about some of them before. But at least I learned something useful while reviewing this blog. He has special category called edisi siasat (investigation edition) for that purpose, after he himself join the program and give it a try. Nice case study! At least you recommend it to others after you have it tested, and not 100% drive by $$$. Good deal if you’re looking for blog that provides free review about how to make online money through affiliate program.

Apologies if I don’t know about this info initially, he is also actually the author of rajapayloadz ebook, ebook about how to make money online from payloadz. He seems to have makes tonnes of money from there. Maybe I should buy this ebook from him after this. Titan, can you give some discount for me? (-_-)

Summary
Overall, this blog has no problem attracting more traffic, based on the number of comments each post received, and how good Titan socializing in blogsphere and forum such as Wangcyber. He seems to be everywhere. Judging on the success of his ebook (he provides certain percentage of the income to his top commentator contest), this blog can be brought to a higher level. But it seems that Google does not index his blog well, except for his homepage. Something has to be done to rectify this. He does have quite good statistic in Yahoo, though.

p/s: I’ll post the each review a blog per post due to lengthy review

I seldom read or buy magazines except bumper or year end edition. Even though the price is slightly higher than their normal publications, but it is worth your penny. Before this, I love PC and gadget magazine the most, but with our environment that keeps on changing, I think it is time for me to read something else. That’s how I started reading other topics (irrelevant to me before) such as parenting, personal development, finance, human and economy, world and etc.

Ok back to the topic, year end edition magazines are normally summarizing the main events/development that had happened through out the year. If you miss a lot of things due to you multi constraint, this is payback time. Furthermore, I can’t think of other reasons why you shouldn’t do the same, it’s if you want to be a versatile writer/blogger who can talk and/or write any topics (at least the basic concept).

1) Point number 1 would be the summary of the happenings around the world in a year, be it on big political events, natural disasters, technology, achievements, entertainment, religious and many more..

2) If you’re onto economy, there are economic reviews, growth, market share, commodity price, corporate news, start up, inflation, market prediction and tax. I know the last point is the last thing you want to hear.

3) List of coolest gadgets of the year, incoming hot gadgets, and latest technology most suitable to geeks. Year end full of review of what is the best or worst product of the year and the new product release prediction.

4) Free goodies. Yeah, you can expect more from them. Take HWM as an example, their bumper issue comes with cell batteries, calendar, wristband and photo printing paper. Not bad to me.

5) It is the knowledge/news that matters most. I like magazine because of its portability. I can bring and read it anywhere without any restriction or burden to keep it safe.

p/s: My wife and I would like to take this opportunity to wish all readers a happy new year 2008. Hopefully, 2008 will be a prosperous year to me and all of you. If you haven’t subscribed to my RSS, please do it now. There are a lot of exciting updates sitting in front of you. Don’t miss it.

I’m not Apple fan club, but when someone is giving away free iPod for reviewing their contest and naming their new hockey website, I won’t hesitate to join it without 2nd thoughts. Michael Kwan’s blog who want to be known in internet as freelance writingg and his friend, Ed who want to be known as personal blog are give away not only 1 iPod, but 2 iPod to the winner for their contest and to the loser on a random draw

To join the contest, choose the best domain name for their upcoming hockey blog and send it to them, the winner will receive 8Gb iPod. And to stand a better chance to grab another iPod, write simple review on the contest and another iPod is waiting for you.

If you’re interested to join this contest, I will suggest you using bustaname since it make your life easier in hunting for a good domain name. Good luck