Azrin’s Info Web

Just if you wonder what happened to my cluster of sites hosted on the East Coast Massachusetts, well, be frank to you, I exceeded my server resources.

Meaning, it will be down a bit till I sort out which site is taking up so much use or am I being leeched again. It’s right now suspended for EXCEED BANDWIDTH, which is standing at 15,000,000,000 MB (that’s 15 TERRA BYTES) allocated to me for the month.

I’ll be pulling up the secondary server up which is on the low end, but please be patient, since it’s the weekend.

Thank You

If you think advertising on the web is really a great way to do things, well, you are right, except that the costs of advertising on the web is so expensive, especially with platforms that are already settled in like Google , AOL or even Yahoo hacking a 70% Premium of the entire advertising budget from you.

The American market is totally a joke, because there are so many players in the market that they undercut each other and it’s tainted with terror and gangs the like, especially in New York. Many have died off taking the publisher revenue with it, even in the Asian Regions. Go Kita or formerly known as Nufflets is the latest casualty to the process with little financial backing and other problems caused them to lose their pool of publishers and without a pool of publishers, they can’t get any sales as there is no where to advertise.

Many remembered the Advertlets scandal many months back and triggered a crash with Nuffnang Malaysia and the huge outcry with the Malaysian Bloggers was something they can’t handle,and just as well, Kedah-Based (Alot Star) Grab My Ads are something you don’t hear anymore.It’s as if they have gone belly up, since they are just another enterprise.

Which I came to hear from XBRAIN that Aductions finally set up office in KL! Yes, they are based in Centerpoint Bandar Utama just off One Utama with Starbucks and McDonalds round the corner, which I find it typical of this team of expatriate professionals. Mamak, Starbucks with WiFi, McDonalds 24/7 ,what else is needed to run the international market other than to cut their costs and maximise their income. What I heard is that they landed in Malaysia after signing an exclusive deal with a huge media campaign which from what I hear, government linked.

Best part of this deal is that I don’t have to worry about the Paypal payouts as they are writing publishers Malaysian Ringgit Cheques so they will do the exchange and stuff,saving you the US$5 withdrawal fees each time and without any charges and immediate payouts.There are some CHINESE and ARABIAN advertisers too, so it’s time you get your stats up and prove to the market you are worth it. I would suggest small timers to take the CPD or Cost Per Day basis, similar of Text-Link-Ads to entice the advertisers, plus the hassle of fraud click checks are taken away immediately, unless you have no traffic at all each day.

Getting you friends to sign up will earn you Commission Credits which pushes your income up, which you can use to trade ads with other members, like LiewCF or XBRAIN.BIZ, driving your traffic up. Imagine 50,000 visitors a day? Yeah.

So,what are you waiting for , sign up at Aductions (from the logo) or better still, wait out for their official opening and have coffee on them. At least it’s far better than the Nuffnang office.

Well, words says much more right but in this new era, I was always fascinated by Voice Recognition Software because I am a lazy bum. About in 1996, I came across this feature that was only compatible with IBM with less than perfect Artificial Intelligence AI because I had to speak very clearly and slowly mainly they have a little bit on the dictionary in itself.

Now, the speech recognition software is so far better that even huge companies utilize these speech recognition system in initial customer service interaction. Thought for those who are disabled or less than sensible, companies like BT and E-Trade used them to ask you to input your account number or social security number.

Which is good on paper but with idiots like me who can’t correctly pronounce all the ‘R’ or some others, it’s a really painful way to do things as the human is the best way forward for that kind of people. Imagine me speaking 6543 1234 and the system thought I was saying 6853 1434!

But it’s a good way forward anyway, as once the fuzzy logic started to learn on your larynx, it will work to perfection so that you can dictate your thesis of 500,000 words and it will type it for you like what I did with my last projects. That’s why I am so interested into it.

Well, I did like to take short cuts..and this was written by a human…not by MS WORD! My gang who had to write their TESL dissertation will sure be angry with me especially when they had to explain phonetics and the sort.

Alot of you will be fretting to why you don’t get even enough earnings from the web? Some even get less than $5 a month from advertising on their blogs that these don’t even cover the basic cost of Internet Hosting of $5.77 and the cost of a domain. Ever wonder why LiewCF and Jason Ooi made thousands a month when you can’t even hit that dollar? Don’t think of those cheap tricks, but it comes back to basics.

1) YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME.

Without it , you are basically sharing or not even getting any credit for your work and ideas. Each Domain has it’s own value, to it’s own keywords and it BELONGS TO YOU. Some are as low as $2 a year if they are on sale, and some are given free, if you sign up for some freebies or take up a hosting package.

2) Divide and Conquer.

Each domain can be sub divided to a sub domain to your own liking.A sub domain may talk about like My Kitchen Disasters (or do it directly as MYKITCHENDISASTERS.AZRIN.INFO)

So each sub-domain has it’s own agenda to talk about. Don’t garble it all on one single site as it’s devaluing your site. Page Rank relevancy is as such.

3) Flow it, Smoothly does it.

Content. Content. Content. It’s what drives your site to the masses. Information, up to date is best. As much as possible, as frequent as you can get it to be, not just chunking it all at one go. If you have some to lash out, throttle or schedule the dissemination by a few hours so the aggreators , RSS FEEDS managed to be delivered out, otherwise you may be spamming people.

Remember, bots are made by human, they don’t like to visit too often, usually once a day or 5 hours at max, so make it worth their while.

4) Costing and Pricing

If you use ad pricing system like Adbrite or Aductions, remember to set your pricing to be competitive. No Advertiser want to advertise without knowing that they will get value for their money, in terms of sales or clicks.

Competitively, set it to these limits:
10c per click
25c-$1 a day based on impressions (the norm is about $1 per 1000 visitors)
70c per 100 directed views (targeted dermographics etc)

Put it too high you won’t get any advertiser traffic coming to your site(s), set it too low, they will think you are not worth it.

5) Check your stats.

Remember, a Hit does not mean a Visit. Use reliable stats like Google Analytics URCHIN.JS system and of your own to see if they visit long enough, they click something else, or who they are, if you use Yahoo’s MBL system. Always if possible visit their own pages so you build a rapport.

6) ANSWERABLE TO YOUR ACTIONS

Remember, every reply or comment , how nasty it is…is a positive feedback to yourself, in terms of content or even your style. Listen and if possible , reply.

Visitors like to see you reply to your actions.

7) Aesthetic Values.

Having too much ads is an eyesore. Too little means it bare..and it’s a balance of both to the eyes and to the pocket. Some pay nothing. Nuffnang Singapore pays only when you have ads running, so it is best to minimise or don’t show at all, as that will just slow down the loads.

Text Link Ads stay at the side or you can mod it to show horizontally if you write your own PHP MOD.

Right now, colorful and attractive 3 column themes are best, so you can place a leaderboard, skyscraper and a large square/ rectangle inside them

Knowledge is Wealth

But so is sharing it. Sharing knowledge gets you better off, people mention about you and you get the traffic needed. Sharing it with places like Helium gets you paid. the more you share… the more you get. You get publicity and also some royalty. As much as $90 has been paid for an article which has demand. You never know when yours is mentioned in Wall Street Journal.

9) Community

Well, things happen when there is a crowd but bad crowds are something you should steer away from or being in a clan or something. If you love cars, it’s ok to talk about cars and be in car modding forum sharing your thoughts, but not becoming an illegal drag racer on the street, becoming a nuisance or cause harm to others.

10) Compliance.

By complying with the regulations, like censorship or so, you are acknowledged better and you have less of an issue with firewalls or Cyber Nanny. Listing in DMOZ and other directories helps alot too by building you back links and once you are on one, the rest will follow suit.

That’s my 2c , so enjoy the flow of traffic. It works, at least it pays the bills.

One thing bloggers make mistake in the world of incentive Content Creation is in the writing itself. Many of you complain the lack of income surging to the site or even paying for the basic stuff like rent or even the cost of the domain itself. Many, in itself gets about $100 from Google Adsense after more than 18 months.

So how to make a decent return out of the investment? One thing is that to separate each theme or focus per subdomain or domain in itself, like if I say SNAPSHOTS.AZRIN.INFO , it should show pictures or something talking about snapshots. One thing is also the focus of the Meta Tags and the Permalink to each side; if it talks about finance, it should have a slug entitled to the focus.

So how to bring the traffic in? Other than talking about in-depth and hoping for someone to drop by or a mention by a celebrity, you have to pull the traffic in. Some look for plain stuff which will get your blog censored..like pornography or the talk of the latest amateur porn artists. Others link bait or even buy traffic to drive the hordes in.

Will it work? Maybe. How much you want depends on what you have to offer…like the pictures you take (make sure you place the ALT of it) …or food recipes.

Oh well, that’s my 2 cents.

Like it or not, Blogspot or Blogger is the common platform for alot of Spam Blogs or SPLOGS as they deem it and with the Malaysian General Election just days away, there has been alot of speculation, criticism among alot of independent and related Parties.

One off note is that I got a small buzz from someone in charge of Network Management and Control at the Government side and one particularly was that the suppression of Information and Censorship of Content by means of keywords and also domain names. One thing does stick out : BLOGSPOT.

I mean how on earth can you block the entire operandi of Google? With the Nameservers based in the US itself, they really mean that you have to block Google in itself. How could you do that?! It’s like putting the Great Fire Wall of Malaysia… which just sounds like the way Singapore is separated off, by a small Straits.

So, what does it mean to the Blogger who is trying to make money by means of BLOGSPOT?
Well, you will eventually get slower packet transfers and means they will be throttling the bandwidth to those sites. Means that your ads and script will slowly load.

What can you do? One is that to have your own domain, and two import everything from your old blog to the new blog, and wordpress does it well!

How much? Domains are as low as $1.99 for some TLD plus hosting fees. I am a domain registrar and reseller myself and many of them opt to pay a nominal setup fee for the basic blog with next to no limit on the bandwidth. More info will be at my Domains Service.

How does this affect you and what do you have to gain? Mainly the Page Rank will be worth more on your own domain and you have full control over what you want in there. You can even install galleries and subdomains to befit each theme or concept you focus on, but make sure that you don’t get too side track otherwise if your blog sucks.. you bear no traffic which literally means no money!

What does it mean to me…in monetary terms is that you can do link selling or advertising campaigns. Advertisers pay as low as $1 per day for your skyscraper a day to the unethical Sponsored Link Advertorials which can be as low as $100 for a PR 4 site *(I have one which is quite dormant…so let me know if you want free mention…terms apply ah) to as much as $2500 a review for some heavy traffic ones like XBRAIN and the cronies.

So, just be prepared to be blocked off with Blogspot.. but before that, get yourself ready and avoid the rush.

Good luck!

I was having some fun today when a fellow kaki working up at Pageranks in Google Development team back in the US and actually told me that I am eligible to get back my Page Rank Value of 5. I was honestly gob smacked but the requirements are not that easy to comply anyway for me.

1) Content.I must add in the next month or so about 500 + RELATED post! Gosh! It’s bad enough to churn up content but 500? That works to about a post for every hour or so, and they gave extra points for IMAGES!

Yikes! Where on earth will I find content related to SEO and Technology every hour unless I …..do a RSS SPAM. Nah…. I will try.. but it’s not hard because I can churn them out, especially talking about Linux Based, with PHP, ASP and Scripting

2) Related Links. I must be relating the links too. Getting people to link me about my post gives a good boost. Thanks to a list of friends, they do link me often even though it’s not that enough, but every little helps.

3) Traffic. I should be getting a driven profile of over 1000 unique US visitors every day! That is really hard unless I talk business. And making more money and of course, the traffic drive for Malaysia, Video Lucah Melayu 3GPP. That will surely boost me to over 35,000 daily in Malaysia alone. I might want to, but looking at pageranks, I may loose my page classification.

4) Link Community. Having linked in Blogrolls will greatly help, but internal reviews about me will do just as well.

5) Well, of course, my own domain. Without SEO tricks in use. So,there goes BLOGGER!

Will you do this for PR 5?

What a relief it is to be rid of debt, plastic debt that is. Believe it or not, the actual Annual Percentage Rate of a daily rated credit card interest works out to 19.7% even when you pay your debt on time. That given the amount paid is more than the 5% minimum sum and if you take cash out from your credit card, it works to an almost whopping 43.9% APR! Sneaky but 43.9% even when you paid off your credit card cash advance as the way they settle your debt is as follows:
{Given You pay $1500 a month like me}

The LOWEST INTEREST FIRST
Means, the ZERO PERCENT Installment plan which you took to pay for that PC etc.

ie: The Monthly rate of say $190/mth is taken off first from your payment (your bonded with Maxis for 2 Years). The balance gets to pay these…

The Zero Percent Balance transfer which you paid 5% anyway upfront,
(Whatever the balance is available due, means say I transfer $5000 for 6mths, it’s $833)

What is left is $877 paid for these.
Then the Credit Card Annual Fees (included as 2.5% Exchange Fee)

Then it pays for your Lowest Rate Retail Purchases, if Any.
Then the Finance Charges due last month and this month ($450 this month!!)
Then it pays for your purchases ($427 )

Means, these will come back to haunt you:
The Cash Advance FEE 5% a month
The Overseas Transaction FEE 2.5% of the converted amount.

YIKES! You think paying $1500 of the $30000 owed will pay for your bills?
NAH! It pays only for $427 of your purchases.

STUPID?! You bet your paycheck on it!
TAKES YOU 73 months to pay off your debt!!
73 Months or 6 years plus to clear off a debt that you take thinking you save money by paying the minimum sum. FORGET what they say behind the RHB Card statement… it’s bull crap. Not 24mths to clear off, but actually 73 months even without taking a balance transfer or even a cash advance!!

How to save yourself from it??

1) CUT IT UP!!
2) CANCEL IT. There goes your credit line.
3) Sell all your gold NOW (Pajak Gadai gives RM70/gram)
4) Uplift all your Fixed Deposit (why save on 3.4% interest when you get charged 43%!!)
5) Save your paycheck!! Spend on basic essentials only
6) last resort…seek help from Bank Negara. It’s called AKPK. They will restructure your debt and cancel the debt. But no cards or loans for next 3 years.

If you malu..ask money from Ma and Pa before Chinese New Year!

What I did? Well, I canceled my problem with RHB. They were a pain in the ass. Now I owe only the base amount of RM3000 which is about my 2 weeks fuel money. I have to cut my travel expenses now.

What is left? I have to clear off what is owed to CIMB. Yes..it’s a roll over,but at least no more interest. They lowered my rate to about 7.5% as I reduced it to a term loan instead.

A fresh start. A relief. No more Ah-Longs calling.I’ll stick to my Debit ATM Card from AM Bank instead and earn more points.

Well, these days, I seem to be lost, in the choices that is made available to me and the other bloggers in the sense of what we have on the palette to advertise with. Off record, I had to pain painstaking time to sieve through the whole list of advertisers who wish to be on my network. How does 379 slots and advertisers to vouch through and another 700 to prioritize and place the appropriate keywords on their products, and giving them the weighting. Which means alot of work and alot of money.

One of the advertisers which is paying top value for money for ANY TRAFFIC is a FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKET BASED. Also commonly heard as FOREX with CFD and PIPs etc as the jargon word, they are actually paying as low as US1 per visitor. You may see some inline ads here anyway about these FOREX, Markets and so, and tell you, they are really desperate for money. There are so many network based advertisers bidding for Forex Keywords like Dollars, Cents, Yen, Pounds Sterling, Kuwait Dinars, Malaysia Ringgit , all to get the visitor’s attraction.

In comparison, other networks like NUFFNANG has started to move to the groove. Darn right that 25sen is barely 8cents per click compared to me offering 1Penny Per View (see Kedai.TV) which is about 2cents per paid view. It’s not much but getting 15% from your referrals is alot of moolah you can sit on. I got on one advertising run by Nuffnang with RM7.80 for ONE DAY!! That is because I had you to thank for visiting me. It’s nothing compared to a sale accomplished. Commission rate we are talking about ? How does £30 sounds which is about RM200 for just a single visitor!

YES, TWO HUNDRED RINGGIT FOR ONE VISITOR and for the member, there is an incentive of 10% (or about RM20) for that sign up. It’s also commonly called incentive driven promotion which normally works with great sales and traffic. What it means for the blogger is that they get a combination of PER CLICK BASIS and a PER EVENT COMMISSION with a long term cookie to get that sale to your pocket. Be it 10 visitors a day or a million, ratios don’t bother in this one. It’s the amount converted and the personal touch that is needed.

So, what you think, You want 50C per click or 10cents + a percentage of the sale?

I am asking for your opinion.

One of the things that I don’t like is parting company, be it with friends, relationships or affiliation to an organisation. Of the late, I had to choose or they make the decision and one thing that leaves a bitter after taste was with Pay Per Post, and to make things worse, being labeled the worst blogger of the year 2007 (NON-US).

It was a joke at first, and some, had their egoistic American sense of pride to it. So it was a dent to my side income, which is like my candy money.

Of late, Ming asked me to choose whether to stay with Nuffnang Singapore or Nuffnang Malaysia. I don’t recall the need to be so territorial with it, since Ming himself is a Malaysian working in Singapore, earning the sugar and honey from the island itself. Anyway, enough of politics and between us, I had to choose sides.

My Loyalty is to the Country and Beliefs, and be it so, but being faithful to the administration of where you are located is a must. Despite Nuffnang SG pays in Dollars and Malaysia Ringgit, it does not make much of a difference as the income is just petty compared to the sit about and watch income from Text Link Ads and other networks which are in US Dollars.

And so, I will be slowly removing my Singapore Nuffnang ads, because I don’t think I give enough value to my friends and readers alike. This is despite the SG Server granted me Glitterati status and the Malaysian one left me out.

Unless proven otherwise, I will take em out because I want to see variety of ads, not just some static place holder ads which brings an eyesore to me. Having said that.. my layout will look better and less of a clutter…

Anyway, that’s just me.