Charles Lau

I was shocked to hear my friend Carl’s website hacked when he told me about it. While I don’t know what I can do to help him, I went back to the site and found it and alive already with another hosting company. I thought he was joking with me initially, but it was really happening and i didn’t manage to see his site down in the past 8 hours.

Sunday is a day of rest for me to go church at noon, take some short afternoon naps, and surfing around the Internet after having my dinner. When Carl told me about it, I wasn’t at my desk when I reached home from church at about 4pm.

Hacking a website for fun is somehow too big a joke to make. Luckily, his site was not totally removed of his files and database.

I remember back in July when I was having problem using wordpress on Godaddy. After trying all ways to find out how to solve that trailing slash problem, I gave up and move on to Bluehost. After which, I realize there is a slight problem in transporting my files over. After trial and error getting it right, I decided to document it in my blog post as How to Transfer Wordpress from One Server to Another. I never knew it may become useful to Carl or anyone else. I am just glad that I can contribute as part of the blogosphere.

It is bringing to my attention that I should be working on my new website interface pretty soon. It’s been taking some time since I was outside to bring in more income.

Singaporeans basically have the mentality that working longer than expected on their jobs means that they are doing fine on their jobs. I was talking about this topic with my boss I am working for, and discussing about my past business I had done. For the benefits of doubt for those people who don’t know what OT means, OT means “overtime”. So, if you work overtime in Singapore, people will only praise you that you are so hardworking.

Let’s talk about China’s mentality about OT
In China, people basically have the mentality that if you work overtime, you are not efficient in your job. It only means that you are unable to finish your job on time to hand up. But as we go deeper into the meaning of this in China, we found out that people in China are generally lazy and are unwilling to put in quality work in their job. For those of you who went to China, you will realize that most of the products that you buy are of inferior quality. They always seem to have something in lacking, or not well-implemented.

But if you take an even closer look at the people in China… That’s only because the businesspeople there are unwilling to look for better workers to work for them. They employ unqualified workers at very low cost so that they can make money by beating their competitors in terms of pricing. So when we talk about pricing, I think it is safe to comment that no other countries can ever compete China for their lowest possible selling price. They have basically undercut the whole world in terms of their pricing… Though pricing is cheap, quality is further compromised as well! If the quality is continuing to be compromised, I start to wonder when will China ever fall in their economy… Luckily, they have both human resources and natural resources to back them up to hold much more longer because these two resources are the most lucrative resources that the MNC companies will be very interested to take advantage of… And that’s why we start to see more branded products made in China and yet being priced at a competitive rate.

Let’s talk about USA’s mentality about OT
In USA, people there also have the same mentality that if you work overtime, you are not efficient in your job. It also means that you are unable to finish your job on time. But they have a different situation from China. USA people are generally more conscious about quality control. Whenever we see any brand stating “Made in USA”, we will think it is quite safe to buy from. Given their economy of scale and resources, it is no doubt that they should be in the right position to work without OT.

Let’s come back to talk about Singaporeans’ mentality of OT
Ok, Singaporeans almost have no choice but to work OT in their job. That’s because in Singapore, human is the only resource we have to keep Singapore alive and competitive. Add that with our Singaporean government to ensure our country’s safety and better situation (probably because we are small enough to make a better place for human resources). Our population in Singapore is so small when compared to China or USA… We have to work extra long to cover the losses in time which the two gigantic countries can easily cover just by employing more staff. Basically, OT is a culture of being efficient in Singapore. I didn’t realize that until I mentioned about this topic to my boss. Working extra hard on our business is probably one way to make ourselves a better living environment. That also means more money to be made because more products and services are being produced for sale.

Well, I am quite happy to focus myself on doing sales to bring in more income for myself now. Though it is quite tedious to handle sales for my boss while working on my internet businesses, it is nevertheless the only way out for me to work out my future that I have been looking for… To tell you the truth, I think 24 hours is not enough to use every day…

I actually find it interesting to use twitter after trying it myself for the first time! At first, twitter is kinda so unusual for me to work on since I could just start a blog myself to write something about it. But as I write a few post further, I find it an easy way of telling people what I am doing in my life right now in a few sentences. I started to follow one guy in his twitter and it seems like I start to understand how his life is going even though I don’t really know him in real life. How powerful twitter can be!

Easy Posting Method on Twitter
Twitter has made it easy for me to post. I can either post it whenever I am online, or I can post it using my mobile phone before I sleep. Though I admit that I have not really write on twitter on every single day, I think it should become part of my routine to write on it!

Twitter makes all of us connected!
While I have been thinking that blogging is a better choice of writing a journal, twitter actually tells a journal of every individual person in an easy way! Twitter makes sure that you can only tell people in 140 characters! Blogging somehow deters a person from continuing to write about himself because of the huge text space to write about. Every blogger is somehow being faced to write at least 200 to 300 characters, or else it don’t look nice as a blog entry.

Are you following me?
While I am writing, you can follow me by joining twitter yourself and follow my journal. You will start to understand what my thoughts are, what I am doing, why I am thinking that way, etc…

I wish to follow all my online friends who are on Twitter… Let me know if you are in!

Follow me in my thoughts! My Twitter is at http://twitter.com/charleslau

I have been making some money over my blog by writing reviews for blogs with video for the past few months. It has expanded into other blogs to outsource their reviews to me to write for them. I really enjoy reviewing the websites and that the more I have reviewed, the better I am becoming in the position to review some more.

What Makes Your Blog Suitable For Review?
Basically, it is very much appreciated to have a blog to mature for at least 3 months old to be eligible for review. That’s about 90 posts on the high side… and about 25 posts on the low side… Having a blog which is completed with your blog pages describing about what you want your readers to find out about. And as you know for my video, I am basically doing a browsing review of your blog. You are actually seeing a live browsing experience from one of your users (me) to see what you have to offer.

Why Should You Allow Your Blog To Be Reviewed?
To gain the marketing exposure for more potential readers to get to know about your presence. To see what you are doing, so that the readers may want to come back for more. To understand some of the opinions from the reviewer. To improve further in your endeavors to do a better blog always. Usually as a new blogger in the blogosphere, you would want to see how you fare from the perspective of the others. Not just the reviewer giving his point of view. There will be comments about you as well.

Thinking of Outsourcing Your Blog Reviews?
Well, it’s been fun working with the bloggers as partners to work on their review requests. It has always been a win-win situation to both parties, including the website being reviewed. This may require some discussions over the internet to arrive a conclusion about how it should be done. But it has been fun to work it out in the end. As a blogger, you would want to blog more often but you can’t reject any paid reviews along the way as well.

I will be open for ideas if you would want to approach me for a business opportunity to work together. It’s very much to do with working hand in hand with the bloggers with integrity. And I appreciate them a lot. Thank you…

Make money online is not a magic. It doesn’t come by chance. It is never a get-rich-quick scheme. You will never become rich because you follow the rest who are making money online. The one and only reason why people has been able to make money online is because they are in the Internet industry long enough to make money. That’s the only reason why. And that shall remain as the reason for all businesses and jobs in both online and offline. Why is this so?

Your Existence
The obvious reason of being able to make money online is because you have been in this industry long enough to be recognized for your existence. You are able to make money because you have the power! You have the say! You can tell everybody anything, and they will believe in you even if you are not serious about it! That’s the fact… Everybody knows that… Would you rather believe a scientist who tells you that the moon is falling? Or would you believe someone from Internet industry that the moon is falling?

Your Increasing Knowledge
As you work longer in the same industry, you will start to see a very different angle about making money online. And this angle is something which you know it’s really true and you have seen it yourself… You will go all the way to use the same knowledge and apply it to the maximum and even have the ability to make a twist in the knowledge to make something unique… You can’t deny that it is going to make money soon because you see some of the common traits you knew such as increasing traffic and conversion rates of the landing pages.

Your Existing Database
Working long enough in one industry allows you to attract a lot of customers who treat you as their friends. You have all these friends who give you money wherever you go so long as you stay within the same industry or something similar which your database can give you the same amount of attention… Having to build the database over the years, they are your real boss putting money in your bank account… You will become hungry again if you lose this growing database of yours just because you don’t intend to stay in the industry long enough…

Focus Is The Key!
Although this word “Focus” is probably emphasized many times in many businesses, I just wish to say this again because it has happened to me exactly… I used to jump from industry to industry over the last 4 years… From website to real estate to health to events to games to food to delivery and now Internet… The feeling is not good because I always see myself restarting from scratch again just because my database is never growing strong enough and also because my database can’t really be reused directly in the different industries. My learning curve for each industry has been really deep every time I jump into a new industry… My friends I have made over the years have always been confused over what I am doing currently…

Now, you know why time Is the secret to make money online… You can modify your existing business to become better each time, but please don’t jump from industry to industry that easily because you wouldn’t be able to grow anything out of it at the end of the day.

Let your creativity flow along that same industry, and outsource everything which is not so related to your industry… You only have 24 hours a day…

I often ask people around me if they have any intention to start a website. I realize they have a problem when thinking of starting a website. That is, they usually think of starting a website only when they are ready. But I have always told them that starting a website is not like starting a business and start making money immediately. It takes time to grow the website and thus it is always good to work on your website while you are working on your business or job.

Why start when you are not ready?
It’s actually because your website wouldn’t be ready so early. You will need time for your website to grow in terms of search engine rankings and for other websites to link to you… It takes quite a while and that you shouldn’t focus on building all your income based on your website yet unless you are going to invest in heavy advertisement to bring in the traffic as fast as you can…

Maturity in your website
Your website starts to mature along the way as you understand certain methods of attracting your visitors in a better way than others. You can do whatever you want with your website and yet nobody will comment on it. Nobody will know about it either. You can make all the mistakes you want with the website. You can do trial and error with your website. You can even tear down the whole website and re-do them all with nobody knowing about it…

Should I submit my site to search engines now or later?
I would recommend you to submit it as soon as you have started working on your website. That’s because it is not easy to attract traffic from the search engines until the search engines gave you some green light for it. Even if you have a well-done website after working on it for a few months, the search engines might not really believe what your website has to offer since there are so many other credible websites than yours. So while you have a website, simply submit it and keep refining your website while you see your website getting indexed in search engines’ database…

Should I start telling people about my website?
Only when you have a pretty complete website, then should you start marketing your website. If your website still contains a lot of “under construction” pages, I think you shouldn’t let anybody know about it just yet. Giving yourself some time to give a better impression for your visitors, is much better appreciated than to see a website which is not done up properly at all.

Have fun building your website from day one! Happy Boxing Day!

Here’s a collaborative YouTube Christmas Wish!

Merry Christmas everybody! It’s been an interesting day I had with my girlfriend when we went for a party and later a movie. Oh I can tell you that “National Treasure” movie is not really good… I will give it 0.5 out of 5 stars… Have fun! God bless everyone of you…

In my bid to start a new website related to technology, I have been asking around what it takes to keep the readers interested in the website. Some of them read interesting articles, some looking at products and their reviews, some looking for horoscopes, some reading tutorials to learn something and some others just browsing through. I was targeting towards readers reading magazine as well as the websites because I believe there must have some linkage between these two areas.

Looking through the plan I am working towards, I realize the very most important thing to do is to focus towards a topic which can always be a never-ending contents. For example, if you focus too much on a particular item (say xBox for example), you might not be able to write anymore about it when an even newer generation comes in. Focusing towards a niche with the idea of expandability is also something we have to consider.

Planning a blog is something which requires a commitment. Taking some time out of your everyday life to write something is part of your most important role in your contribution to your blog success.

Presenting your blog is also very important. Your blog structure is going to blend to your original website? Is your website going to have an additional feature of displaying products? Is your website going to sell products online? Designing the blog is very serious for your website branding.

Marketing your blog is one area which can never be forgotten. You could market your blog through buying reviews. You could market your blog through PPC campaigns. You could now buy Text-Link-Ads for your website to attract more traffic. You might also want to optimize your blog properly for search engines to crawl for more additional traffic for relevancy and keywords.

Keep a good plan, and stick to it! I think this is the most important thing to do in every business. Don’t be lost…

With the recent acquisition of blogs over the past few months, it has been clear that the new bloggers have almost no idea what they are buying! Especially where they are buying to continue the blog business, it is not an easy stage for the new bloggers especially when their learning curve is still very deep. This reminds me of one new blogger who purchased a review with John Chow where his blog is simply a duplicate of different bloggers’ contents only. And he had a tight slap from John for doing such a thing. So now, we are going to learn a new lesson here…

Buying a blog which is already making substantial amount of money… That’s so ideal for everyone of us where we want to get into real business without much effort to start it up… However, many people simply couldn’t understand the blogging voice that the original blogger has left behind… This voice is somehow not easy to replicate unless you probably have been following his or her blog for quite some time and you are a real good actor…

This reminds me of John Cow who has focused his blog towards making himself a mirror to John Chow. Although he is not taking the same blog voice as John Chow, he has created anther voice which sounds like a cow! This makes his blog stand out from the rest because we like to hear what they are up to in the next posting.

I personally think that there is some failure towards the acquisition of Cash Quests and Desinotes. Although the new bloggers taking over have a few knowledge of their own, it seems like their knowledge is not so familiar to the ones we have been reading… That’s the blog voice I am talking about.

Definitely, there is a way of taking advantage of the existing blog. It seems like Blogging Fingers is taking up a pretty good new owner somehow. Garry Conn is having a good time writing on Blogging Fingers. I don’t think Garry Conn has purchased the blog… Am I right?

To buy or not to buy… That’s for the blogger to find out how to transfer the business effectively… I remember a friend who mentioned to me about her friend’s delivery business which is making good morning every day. But since the new owner took over the business at a few hundred thousand dollars, the business simply drops like crazy! That’s because the customers no longer see the personal touch they previously had with the ex-owner… Furthermore, there are many other delivery companies for them to choose from…

I won a USB key in a contest in early October 2007. However, I still see no news for the arrival of my USB key. Is this just another scam? I had a nice little chat with David Airey before and I think he is a nice guy with a wonderful blog. Probably Jamie has forgotten about it. The only time I received news about it is when I start blogging about it that Jamie informed me about some workers’ strike problem

Taking a look at Jamie’s announcement about the USB Key winner, I felt so sad that it looks so real on the surface… But is it really coming?