Charles Lau

Did I mention to you that I started my public blog only in June 2007? I do have a blog since 2003… But I only blog about my work, my thoughts and my life journal. I jumped from domains to domains. Ultimately, I landed up in WordPress which is the perfect software for my blogging needs. Guess what? I am now learning how to use social bookmarking only where I do know they exist, but I don’t seem to make it work. Hence, I leverage it on WordPress plugins, and I also rely heavily on feedflare for my subscribers to email, tag, share and act on the contents I publish.

Sometimes, I do wish to digg a person’s blog. But I have problem when he doesn’t have a digg’s link for me to click on. Have you got that frustration? Ok, I am getting more and more informed about it now since I have a bunch of good bloggers teaching me how. Thanks to all my online buddies!

This brought me to come up with a list of links that every new blogger should take note of when they first start their virgin blog.

(1) Choosing A Blog Platform
It is so important to understand how to choose and use your preferred blog platform.

(2) Learning About How To Make Money With Blog
Should we monetize our blog now or later? How to experiment different income sources?

(3) 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on your Blog
If we don’t use affiliate programs for our blog, it would be a waste since they are actually relevant to our blogs.

(4) Learn How To Blog Better
Having a blog is a good start.. How to carry on from there? That’s the real question!

(5) How to Write Great Contents
Starting a blog is the start of the business, it’s all about writing great contents all the way.

(6) How to Write “About Me” Page
This is probably the most frequently visited page in the blog. Everybody wants to know who you are.

(7) Finding New Subscribers for Your RSS feed
In a blog, we generally measure a blog’s success by the number of his or her RSS subscribers. It’s number game!

(8) Choosing the Right Design For Your Blog
Don’t you find it tedious to look for the right design for your blog? I have changed more than 3 times with this blog!

(9) Joining Blog Network
It’s almost a necessity to join a blog network. It creates an awareness of your blog, and acts as your very own community.

(10) Feeling Lonely Blogging With No Readers
How does it feel like blogging as though somebody is reading it? And in actual fact, nobody is reading…

I hope you like the links! And have a great weekend!

While you are busy blogging, there are times when you are bound to make changes in your blog. It is either you are too busy with your blog, or you are too busy with other areas of your life. You will start to make amendments to your blogging career as time goes by. This is so true to any business out there as well. While you may make promises to start a business at the beginning stage, somehow it always has changes along the way. Changes are good. It can mean changing to make more money, changing to do a better job next time, or changing to be more effective in time and effort.

The Huge Growth of New Bloggers
Along the path of blogging towards my fourth month, I see new bloggers coming in along. Some are blogging their way through their first month with lots of contents, and are missing in action in their second or third month. Some became stronger each day with a huge surge of traffic, probably because this isn’t their first time working out a blog that makes money. Some went on and on with the patience of blogging with almost no traffic coming in.. And because of traffic, we can make lots of changes along the way directly or indirectly with our blogs.

Quality of Contents Affected by Quantity?
The quality and quantity of contents can also make some changes in your blog frequency as well. Along my path of blogging, I saw many bloggers writing good contents only in their first month. Some copied and pasted other people’s quality contents, and published it as their own. Some simply make the effort to post quality posts on a routine basis. Some simply gone missing-in-action for a few days and post quality posts in between. Whatever the reason can be, I do hear people saying this phrase commonly “I would rather not publish any post if it is not of quality.” Whether it is of genuine case or not, they have at least a reason of defending themselves.

A topic of no topic
Sometimes, we wanted to write a post everyday. But we couldn’t think of a topic to write. At the end of the day, we talk about “What to post when you have nothing to talk about”. While it looks pretty professional that you know what you are writing, it surely gives me an idea that you had nothing to write about so you wrote about this.

To monetize or not
While we are blogging at the very initial stage, we often ponder whether to start monetizing our blog or not. Some simply go ahead with the monetization because it is going to be there anyway, hence there’s no reason not to make some money possibly. There are some who maintain their standing that they have to hit certain number of pageranks before monetizing it meaningfully. I even hear some saying they are not going to make money out of their Make-Money-Online blogs because of different reasons. Whether they are true or not, or whether they succeed or failed in their initial monetization strategy which caused them to do such thing, they are always right in their own blog anyway.

Face-Lift Trend
This recent, I saw many probloggers having the trend of doing face-lifting for their blogs. Cashquests.com, JohnCow.com, JohnChow.com, Problogger.net, Shoemoney.com, etc. And now, the infamous mystic theme for wordpress is now being “abandoned” by the probloggers. The trend now is with Nate Whitehill and his famous unique blog themes. People seem to be rushing their way to him for blog-face changes.

Conclusion
No matter where you stand, I think it is all to do with standing by what you are doing, and make your blogging career a much smoother one. I was facing lots of “barriers” along the way. Barriers of using WordPress for the first time in June 2007, barriers of writing what kind of contents, barriers of what social bookmarking is, barriers of understanding the blogging culture, barriers of blending my way into the bloggers’ community, and many other barriers etc…

By the way, I admit that I also wrote a post about “What to write when you have nothing to blog about” too!

This is my first review with blogspot’s url appended even though it has been one of the most frequently used blogs online. It has a page rank of 3, started since 23rd February 2007. I think he’s also the first Indian blogger I have reviewed. And his name is Ashwini Khare with his prominent blog called Web Talks with a Technorati rank of 424 and an authority of 2248! That’s over 2000 links to his blog in just 7 months. How did this guy do that? That’s amazing, right?

Let’s have a look at the video review of his blog here…

Blog Statistics About WebTalks
Well, I am not too sure how he managed to get so many links to his site. When I look at the backlinks, lots of them are from blogspot domains… Is he making lots of blogspot friends? Well, I am not sure. But with so many back links and so little page rank juice, I believe those blogspot friends he has made should be of low or zero page rank themselves.

Come to think of it… When I used blogspot in the past myself, I was really pampered by Blogger.com to use their service since 2003. It’s until I stopped using Blogger.com in June 2007, that I found WordPress at last which exposed me to a bigger world of blogging. I am very used to surfing blogspot websites myself during those times. In fact, it looks like it’s a common blogging tool used by most Singaporeans here.

But let’s just take a look at the kind of prominence he has online…

1. Huge number of back links.
2. A page rank of 3.
3. Top 100 Make-Money-Online blogs with 45n5.
4. Technorati Rank of 424, and an authority of 2248.
5. More than 800 links to his site in Google search engine.
6. Claiming to have 1870 unique visitors so far.
7. Stat Counter stating a traffic of over 200 visitors everyday.
8. Alexa Traffic History Graph is unavailable… Maybe his circle of friends don’t really use Alexa toolbar?
9. It has a RSS readership of about 77.
10. Making $90 income in August stats.

Slightly Better Interface
Webtalks has a slightly better blogger template than most other blogspot websites. It has a familiar three-column blogging template, similar to WordPress style. This recently, I start to see lots of blogspot websites using those kind of wordpress-alike templates.

The common flaw of using blogspot is that they don’t provide us to publish pages to guide the readers. However, Ashwini is smart enough to use posts to take the place of his “Advertise Page” and “Write For Us Page”. But as for “Contact Me page”, he has to outsource it to external websites for his communications with his readers. This is something I wouldn’t want to do as it concerns the communication with my readers.

Overall Contents of this blog
As I read through his blog, I have come to a conclusion that this structure of this blog is pretty well optimized for both search engines and visitors. Why is it so?

1. It contains pretty good quality contents to attract new traffic to individual posts.
2. Adsense placement is optimized in every post. (I see two prominent ads on top.)
3. Top Posts are also prominently placed for us to click on it.
4. When frequent readers go to his front page for some quick browsing, they can focus at his latest contents better because Google Ads are only shown at the sidebar.
5. Also notice that his blog is fully optimized for Adsense where his most prominent left sidebar on top shows his ads.
6. First time readers might stay longer at his site as his blog is pretty straightforward with contents on the left, and sidebar on the right.

MMO 1.0 and MMO 2.0
Make-Money-Online blogs seem to look similar across the world. When I first look at his blog, I don’t feel unfamiliar at all with the commonly used success formula of a Make-Money-Online blog layout. This is what I called the Make-Money-Online 1.0 (MMO 1.0). Now, MMO 2.0 is being defined by Nate Whitehill with his infamous three short columns on top, and the blog contents on the left with a sidebar on the right. There are yet many outstanding MMO 1.1 look which is a modification of the old MMO 1.0.

Conclusion
WebTalks.BlogSpot.com is absolutely another Make-Money-Online blog, which is growing slowly over the months. Ashwini has been working on his blog patiently for quite some time… And it has quite a few blog awards along the way. I felt a little privileged to review his blog which gives me yet another insight about making money online. Thank you Ashwini…

It may sound a little weird. But I am seeing a blogger who is going to use affiliate program to attract more visitors to his blog. So if I ask you to click here, I make $0.01 per visitor from my own blog. Is this kind of affiliation going to work? It sounds like a crazy marketing method to use for a blog, but when you compare to the Pay-Per-Click campaigns it is so much more cheaper. He mentioned that he is going to pay for every visitor… That sounds exactly Pay-Per-Click deal to me…

I don’t think it’s ethical for me to mention who on earth is going to do such a silly thing in his blog… Anyway, he is still doing something absolutely legal…

Just imagine John Chow writing a post to his blog talking about this blogger for free… John is going to earn lots of money instantly for all the visitors he directed! By the way, I believe John will not mind writing another post about that blogger since he had bought a $400 reviewme from John Chow before where he got a big slapped in the post. *hint*

When I saw one of his posts writing about his increase in traffic reported from Alexa, I thought he’s making a comeback. However, his comments revealed that he bought some reviews elsewhere… He must be really rich in cash! And that’s why he’s going to use the power of money for the next wave of traffic through affiliate program…

But anyway, his increased alexa traffic is not consistent yet… And it was only pushed up by external reviews… Who knows if it is going to drop the next day? He’s just being happy at an early stage…

When it comes to business, it has never been more easier to start one today than in the past. That’s because we have a lot of information in many forms, telling us the secrets of starting a business. Just imagine there are 70% in the world who are still working for others, while the remaining 30% are doing business. That explains why most of the people in the world don’t know how to start and manage a business in the past. And now, we have all the theory backing up our lack of experience…

The availability of theory
Theory has become more and more readily available with the advances of Internet called “Web 2.0″ and the increasing number of businesses to educate the 70% of the people who are still in the dark about the secrets of doing business. Flipping through the newspaper and you will find lots of business opportunities and entrepreneurship programs. They are providing ways and means to let you headstart your business.

Your first step into business
After you have equipped yourself with all the theory about doing a business, you will start to embark onto your entrepreneurial path. You faced the business with no fear, knowing in theory what the dangers are like in front. And when your first business failed, you already knew it and move on into another business. That’s the magic about business in theory.

The Flaw About Business Theory
It might be true that these business educators have gone through the times of doing their own business… And they are here to teach you how to do your own business with their experience. They acted like a mentor in your business. To you, their experience is your theory. You bought lots of books and audios about doing business. And soon, it seems like theory and practical are both mixed inside your experiences…

Just think about this… When you are reading a book, the author writes about his experience from the first chapter talking about the basics of doing business into his final chapter of business advance step. You read through the whole book. And when you apply word for word, you tend to have a confusion that you have gone through the process in which the author has gone through in his own experience. And when that happens to you, you couldn’t get enough references to handle the real experience when it happens.

Let’s look at it in a scenario on the road where you are driving in a car. Treat the business book as an atlas, full of maps in the book. You are currently at point A on a certain page in the atlas, and you want to go to point B in another page of the atlas. You are like flipping straight to point B in the atlas, trying to find your way to point B and getting yourself lost on the road!

So, to fully apply what you have learned from the book you have bought, you have to find out where you are with reference to the book. And apply it slowly to where the book is guiding you to. This will then guide you through the exact experience that the author has gone through himself!

The Problem With Most Theory Readers
Many theory readers out there simply read a lot of books. And I have found a perfect example inside my circle of friends where he possessed and read almost every single piece of information you might know of! He sounds as though he has gone through a lot in the business world! And when they are trying out in their first business, it’s most likely to fail in the end due to the lack of experience to handle the actual situation! It’s only if they have mega memory to memorize every single step and apply it in their business closely… And the funny part is that when a person is too busy with his own business, he might not really reference his business with the books he had read, thinking that he is already a master in the industry!

Even a person who has read the road maps for directions, might need to reference back from time to time to ensure he’s on track! How about you?

Perhaps you might be thinking why there is now a $10 fee for my video review for your blog. It was being asked in one of the comments and I thought it would be good to talk more about it.

Initially, I am putting up a message saying that I am reviewing your blog for free. It has created a long list of bloggers asking for reviews. And up till now, I haven’t finish my reviews with this list. And while the free reviews are in the queue, I prioritized all blogs which paid $10 for reviews and hence pushing the list of free blog reviews behind. Well, it’s fair to give priority to the paid reviews, right?

I couldn’t finish all the blog reviews yet, and it has created a weekly routine of 2 blog reviews for me. And while reviewing a blog takes a little while to understand and to write a blog post about it, doing a video review might take even longer because of the unforeseen Not-Good videos. Sometimes, one video review might take me more than 20 videos of Not-Good status which takes up at least half of my day away while I am still working out on my core internet business.

While $10 isn’t a lot when compared to most reviews out there which commonly cost between $30 to $60, it could mean three things in my blog:

1. I typically get a few blog-review requests every other days since it used to be free. It created such a long queue of reviewing blogs of requesting more than 2 weeks ago! While some of the reviews I am asking the bloggers to give me some time to work out their reviews, the rests I have to reject in order to avoid further disappointment… (Don’t you think you are lucky to be chosen? haha just joking..)
2. A $10 fee will deter too many requests for blog reviews… Definitely, the number of requests have dropped… But it has also attracted genuine requests… And I am glad to make friends with genuine bloggers out there! Sometimes for some reasons, I even have to reject bloggers who are willing to pay $10 too… Reasons such as their blogs are actually not ready to be reviewed with so many missing things which might not be good for their reputation on video review.
3. While many blog-review requests are still in the queue for me to work on it, I felt like asking for an apology to all of them that their review requests being accepted are so back-dated. Yes, I do warn each and every one of them in the request that it might take quite long for their turn in the queue…

Having the privilege to review prominent blogs like John Cow, Carlocab and Sabahan, it makes me feel so proud of myself to be able to review their blogs. Interestingly, I also get to review unknown seasoned bloggers who are not so famous out there and yet they have lots of page rank juice secretly. I also get to review TheGeekBoys who are already successful in their other areas of Internet business and they are starting out their first blog together. And also get to review blog which is not another Make-Money-Online topic! It has exposed me to different faces of the blogging world instantly!

So if you think your blog is ready to be reviewed, check this review-you page out before contacting me. I hope I have cleared any question in your mind…

I was working out on my new web project. I can start to see that I am writing more and more like a sales copy. And my website wouldn’t be effective if I couldn’t write well! Kumiko has become my Grammar Police! I am now getting more and more aware of my words as it actually contributes to how much I am going to make! In other words, I am training myself to be a copywriter for my websites. Well, it’s fun to do copywriting though it seems so tough for me to work out a good web copy.

These few days, I have been working on a side job of helping friend to do up his website, while working on my new sites up. The difficulty of working on the site is not really with the programming… It’s more towards working on the words in the site… It’s the copywriting on the site that sells… Ultimately, it’s the words inside that convert the prospects into customers…

And blogging is somehow different from writing a web copy! Blogging comes from my thoughts.. And it will just flow as I think and my hands type. But for writing up a web copy, I have to think through the process of displaying that piece of information to the visitors. What the visitor is going to feel while he’s on my site… Whether it is going to cater to his benefits… If it really helps him… And it has to be genuine…

What makes an internet marketeer different from the usual marketer is that the usual marketer only knows how to “spam” the users with lots of information… In the real world, that really works… Opening up your mailbox outside your house, you will see “spams” but you might catch the idea and buy it… But when it comes to email spamming, it is quite a nuisance even though I may get the same awareness the usual marketer is trying to give.

And the Internet marketer’s ultimate skill is with the words… It voices down to my understanding why Kumiko is better than anyone of us at making money online when she caught my grammar mistakes in my blog. It looks like Kumiko is pretty good at her English to bring in money online. Anyway, Internet is really an information portal at the end of the day!

So to all the Internet Marketers out there, probably the most basic thing to do is to brush up our English which we had gone through back in our childhood days…

I am really shocked to see a blogger lying through his teeth to make money from his advertisers and reviews. In fact, I had already notified Kumiko about it when she blogged about that fellow boasting a huge number RSS feed readers when he didn’t have that much in his feed… I didn’t really think so much about it since I was about to be reviewed by Cash Quests. And as time goes by, I happened to find this fellow in a forum which my friend was asking me to look for a designer to design my header banner image in that forum.

I saw this guy on forum by chance again… And when I look back at his blog, I was shocked to see him continue with his exaggerated 200+ RSS Subscribers! When I took a look at his actual feed subscription using this simple url http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/BloggingDosh, everything is revealed… I really don’t wish to say so much about it… But I can now feel the anger inside me just like Kumiko… (Please go to Cash Quests blog to find out which site I am talking about…)

If you want to steal food to eat, always remember to wipe your mouth after eating… Don’t let Charles catch you…

We have all the professional bloggers out there teaching advanced techniques about blogging. In fact, many of us are taking for granted that our audience are bloggers. But how about those beginners who wish to start their own blogs? I am guilty of this fact myself that I am writing with the thought of everybody knows about blogging. But not this 21-year-old lady by the name of Becky S., living near San Diego, CA. She started her Beginners Guide to Blogging blog, focuses on amateurs, guiding them step by step…

Becky approached me to review her blog on video at least two weeks ago… In fact, I still got quite a few in the queue, and I am glad that they are all very understanding… That’s because I wanted to give more exposure to the bloggers on the front page of this blog by restricting myself to two blog reviews a week. If I were to squeeze all the blog reviews together, the attention from the readers wouldn’t be better.

Thank you Becky for giving me a chance to review your blog.

Let’s take a look at the video review.

In this review, her blog is more like an article site with her personal touch. She hid all her blog dates, letting us focus just on her articles without thinking whether it’s the latest post. That’s a good idea which is being adopted by some probloggers lately. The focus on a blog should be with the contents and not about watching out for the latest post.

I couldn’t see her Google Ads on her front page until I clicked into her blog. Probably her focus on the blog is to attract traffic from various search engines to her individual posts… And she spared her loyal readers for coming back to read her blog with full attention…

Becky’s Pages
Becky is a very detailed blogger! She defined her blog very well too. She made sure she has all the following pages in her blog:

1. About Me
2. Contact Me
3. Guide to Blogging
4. Sitemap
5. Top Posts
6. Review Me
7. Subscribe
8. Disclosure Policy

Probably the only thing being left out is “Advertise” page. I believe she thinks that it is not time yet to put up her site for advertisements for sponsors, until she has refined her blog even further with more contents and better stuffs for us to see.

The Necessary Pages For Every Blog
In my opinion, every blog has to contain “About Me” and “Contact Me”. It acts as an introduction to the readers and to allow feedbacks if there’s any. She also includes “Top Posts” to give first-time visitors like myself to understand her blog better and faster. She also offers reviews to blogs according to your payment amount, ranging from $5 to over $60.

Interestingly, there’s a disclosure policy in her blog as well. Something which not many blogs out there will write.

A Dedicated Page on Subscribe Me
I am not sure about other bloggers, but Becky actually wrote a page talking about blog subscription. Not even myself. She wrote a page about subscribing to her blog, just in case her audience who are starting out know how to subscribe her blog through a reader or by email. A blogger, like herself, has got that patience to write every single detail properly to make sure they know what they are doing on a blog! By doing that, she will be able to capture interested visitors to come back again for more!

5 Special Pages To Teach About Beginning to Blog
She has a special page about Guide to Blogging. It consists of 5 steps in different pages in the following:

1. Get a Blog.
2. Getting Ads for My Website.
3. Get Indexed.
4. Write Posts.
5. User Interaction

They are written in simple-to-understand details. She must really have that patience to write it all out properly.

Conclusion

What’s with that toilet roll? I am not sure what it has to do with her blog. And you can really see that her blog is focusing more towards beginners with all her pages written specially for them. This blog is probably one of the easiest blog reviews I have done, probably because she’s good at relaxing the first-time visitors reading her blog while feeding on her contents.

If you look at her blog from another point of view, she’s doing yet another “Make-Money-Online” blog. But she seems to be a “detailed” person… means that she is very particular and she is making sure every part of her blog is engineered for the new bloggers to view. Just look at her multiple pages I have mentioned above, and you will understand what I mean…

She has brought to my attention about the number of female bloggers in her female bloggers list. There are so many female bloggers out there! And it seems like this is the first female blogger I am reviewing…

A great blogger in the making… Thank you for letting me to review you on video.

Following up with my previous blog post about the law of attraction, I have now managed to watch the whole movie “The Secret”. I personally think it’s a good movie that awakens the giant within a lot of people out there! My girlfriend told me that this show is like teaching about psychic… I think if it’s something that can get what we want, I will use this “psychic” power. Anyway, it’s nothing about psychic. It’s just about attraction.

If you have talked to a lot of people who are striving hard to do a business, you will hear from those people – who are making some money out there – learning something very powerful. Just imagine ourselves that we are taking each day doing sales to make our ends meet whereas the employees out there are getting their “stable” salary every month. To continue with the motivation to move on and make money this month, next month and every month, it has a lot to do with the so-called “Law of Attraction”.

Here’s a twenty minute preview of The Secret.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b1GKGWJbE8[/youtube]

It’s something powerful yet simple. All we need to do is to ask… And we shall receive everything that we asked for. When the actual thing comes, we have to open up our hands to receive… I wonder how many of you actually realized that… It’s as simple as thinking about it. Thank God to let me see this show. In fact, we were created in the image of God… We are so powerful in life… All we need to do is to think and grow rich…

This idea has been emphasized over and over again by many people… And many people got rich because of it… It’s either because they apply it, or they teach it to the public. Many just cannot understand it and simply get failures after failures… I seriously think they need to read this book about The Secret… In fact, the more accurate idea comes from the bible… The real source of all secrets…