Charles Lau

I have been running into problems with my video capture program for quite a while. I have contacted hyperionics for help in the support for this program. I found Greg very helpful in assisting me with the problem that I am facing. He is trying very hard in every conversation that we have made. I went from trying the program, reinstall the program, to editing the windows registry. Made every effort to solve the problem, till I found the real problem later…

Video capture program is very important in my reviews of websites. It caused me to make late delivery of reviews to my clients. I never knew what is really going on till my hard disk crashed on me finally. After my hard disk crashed, I made a new replacement of my hard disk. And by the way, my information is all wiped out! I had to contact several online sellers whom I have bought online to ask for the replacement products again. After the replacement of hard disk, hypercam finally worked very well on my computer.

All along while I was trying and waiting for Greg to give me assistance in my HyperCam, I was trying to work out my WordPress theme. It has been a nice little piece of work I am going through. Hopefully, it will work out to be nice when it is published.

I hope to work out more reviews for people out there. And if you are interested to request a review from me, you may ask me for it and I will give you a full website review at an offer of only $20 when you mention this promotional code “charleslau”. This offer ends in 30th April 2008.

Well, this is not exactly a job. It’s your very own Internet business. I have been wondering what makes a person eligible to be an internet marketer. A lot of friends told me that they couldn’t do web business like me because they are not computer programmers. Well, I know of a lot of friends who are not computer programmers but they are making lots more money than me. So, what is your entry barrier to be an internet marketer?

An internet marketer is someone who wishes to do marketing on the internet. They can be marketing a product or a service for people to buy. And every part of the internet is a business to someone else. Let’s say you want to promote certain product through advertisements, you are paying money to someone who provides the “link of blood” to give your new website a new life. You are doing whatever it takes to market that product or service to someone who is potentially your customer one day.

To apply for an internet marketing job, you basically need three qualifications.

1. Knowledge
2. People
3. Selling

Knowledge Qualification
You got to decide for yourself, what kind of knowledge you already know or are acquiring to provide to your potential customers. You focus yourself on that knowledge, dedicating yourself to learn more about that topic while your customers leverage on you to understand what this knowledge is about. Having this knowledge actually comes along with products and services you can provide to your customers to enjoy. Because Internet is a place of knowledge. If you are not knowledgeable, it makes no sense for me to understand who you are and what you are doing.

People Qualification
Do you know enough people along the way? Never mind, you can start from blogging, foruming, or any online chatting mechanism or social media sites. Simply get to know as many “competitors” as possible in your own industry. In Internet, there is no competition. In Internet, there are only joint ventures. We are all helping one another to improve, helping one another to make money online, and helping to motivate one another. Keep knowing more friends online! Who says Internet has no life?

Selling Qualification
Do you have any sales experience before working on the Internet? If not, it is good to start by reading books related to sales and copywriting. Writing a good sales copy is a very important step towards your success in life. No sales = no money. Sales is the one and only way to bring in money for your survival. You can know a lot of things and lot of people. But if you are pretty bad at selling, it’s hard to make money online after knowing so much. Internet marketing is very similar to selling. So, start selling products today!

So, do you have all these criteria in your job resume? Start acquiring them now to qualify yourself in the Internet marketing world.

It seems like more and more bloggers are now talking about viral video recently. Viral video has been silently slipped into our market where we unknowingly enjoyed all the various YouTube videos without realizing that they are actually produced by the viral video superstars. It’s just like the times when we started surfing the internet for free information. Did we actually think how these websites make money while we were their consumers back in the early days?

Viral video superstars are taking the internet dominance by storm. They could potentially be more famous than the conventional TV superstars, without a marketing company manager to assist them. Back in the past, when we need to sell a video or audio to the market, we would have to look for a company who is willing to give us the assistance with the connections that they have.

Currently, I am helping a client to do viral marketing for the various songs that she is broadcasting in the Internet for her coming concert. With almost immediate gratification, we get to see some results based on some of the experiments that we did online. It is getting exciting in fact.

Found this video attached below about the viral video superstars. Enjoy!

I was trying to log into a website which I have entered quite some time ago. I somehow couldn’t login, probably because of my incorrect username or password. I was happy to see “Forgot Password” link as always. I went in, and I was asked my username and email. I gladly entered them, and on the next page I was stunned there! So, what is my answer to that secret question?? So I have also forgotten that answer, now what?

Sometimes, these website owners couldn’t understand the feeling of the consumers. We are all human beings, and we have to understand numerous passwords everyday. Nevertheless, it has become natural for many of us to use the same password everywhere we go. It is still however a loophole there if your website owner isn’t a good guy afterall! If he knows which other websites you have gone to, we can all imagine what he can do to your many other websites’ accounts…

Most of the websites have now removed away the password challenge by asking the intruder a question for their identity. Now, they have done it in another way. For example, I personally like the WordPress style of password challenge. If I forgot my password, all I need to do is

1. to key in my username and email. That authentication is pretty good enough because I have to remember both my username and email used.
2. Then, I am emailed of a link to click. So I check my email and click it.
3. Then, I am emailed again. This time round, it is my new password!

Isn’t that sweet? Instead of remembering my answer to your question, I just have to remember my username and email used. And to check my email for that extra security to ensure I am the actual one! If not, the email owner will simply ignore it since it will not change the settings anyway.

I was reading about a man being arrested for his money having the smell of marijuana. In that news, the whole focus is on the man and his marijuana found. The whole operation is too smooth to be true. The bank teller is able to identify the smell! Right from the start, who on earth can identify such a smell except for the one who consumed it or to do business with it?

The few possible ideas might be:

1. The arrested man is just being unlucky to be arrested.
2. Or the bank teller was trained in banks to identify such smell.
3. Or the bank teller did business or consumed before.
4. Or the bank teller was previously a police or some investigator.
5. Or the bank teller was being instructed by someone else to frame the arrested man.

The whole idea is that the one who is more suspicious is the bank teller instead of the arrested man. The whole story was done in such a way that the whole operation looks so smooth… Is it really true?

I have been doing video reviews for quite a while now, and I am still doing today for some of the bloggers out there in their website reviews. I saw this Viral Video post from John Chow about him thinking of going about doing weekly videos on his blog. This is going crazy as Darren Rowse seems to be the first to take the lead, and then many others coming up.

John Chow was writing that post in response to Ryan Shamus about Viral marketing in video. In Ryan’s blog, he attached a video which has been seen by many people on the Internet. John Chow also followed suit and put up that video. As I was watching that video once again, I found another video which could potentially be viral because he actually incorporate American Idol with it. Here’s the video virus for you to catch!

In my new blog theme I am creating, I have also planned to put in a weekly video about internet reviewing. Viral video can actually convert lots of YouTube traffic into your faithful readers. And while your faithful readers might be bloggers themselves, they might actually introduce even more readers into your realm when they attached your video there. That’s how powerful a video on the Internet can go in the form of website. In fact, intangible products are so easily spread that people like Edison could become a victim with his girls.

The market for MLM (also known as network marketing) is so small when compared to internet marketing. When you do MLM based on your own network, you will start to realize that your market of people buying is so small. When you think of internet marketing, you are talking about mass appeal. It has a lot to do with the market out there which can potentially be your customers.

Today, I was introduced by a friend to see a MLM seminar where they are doing rank presentation to their downlines. As usual, before I go there, I am not told that this is a MLM seminar. But it is ok because I wanted to see what kinds of products they have to offer for me to distribute in my own business if possible. I went there, and I start to feel a whole new thought. Just imagine you joining a distributor where they teach you to be their business partner. Then, they thought of asking you to ask your buyers to be a reseller so that you can get a cut from it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the system of MLM. The only wrong concept is to make those consumers focus on recruiting instead of selling the products. Because consumers always have the thought of buying for their own usage, and if you ask them to be a reseller (Or a distributor as they called it), their focus is not to sell people the products…. Instead, their focus is to recruit people in the hope of selling for them. Consumers will never ever thought of selling when they are buying.

Then when you look at internet marketing, it’s a whole new ball game again. Internet marketing has to do with your marketing techniques to the mass appeal, just like TV marketing or Radio marketing. The market will be so much more broader. Internet marketing is more to do with the information that we are marketing to. Just imagine how powerful a book can affect the economy? Or how about a newspaper to tell the world a news which is not true? That’s the power of copywriting where all of us have to learn as an internet marketer. And to attract more traffic, you could think of search engine marketing, or joint venture, or forum marketing, or database marketing.

I feel that the MLM distributors should focus on selling the products more than just recruiting. Because of the focus of recruitment, they could “force” the person to buy the products that they don’t appreciate. What’s the point there? Potentially, you are ruining your relationship with your friends.

Nowadays, we are talking about Internet Network Marketing or Internet MLM. Potentially, there is an opportunity there since you are marketing it through the Internet to get the market appeal more than just your own network of friends and relatives. It is likely to be able to have a whole new revolution as we already have affiliate marketing which can go into 2nd and 3rd tiers.

I was checking my gmail for work just now when Forbes caught my eye with their special report about The World’s Billionaires. As per normal, I get to see Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Lee Ka-shing, and some familiar names. Also, I don’t really see Donald Trump inside the list even though he’s very well-known to be part of the Billionaire Club. As I was looking through the huge list of billionaires showing off their money at me, it comes to my thought of looking for the youngest billionaire since most of the billionaires I know are already around 50 and above.

And I was shocked to find out how young Mark Zuckerberg is for his famous facebook online application. He is only 23 years old! Even Google founders are above 30s. Mark is a Harvard dropout student. And it seems to me that being able to attain such an achievement doesn’t require you a degree after all. And if I am not wrong, Michael Dell and Bill Gates are also dropouts.

Being rich in his money as well as his time, Mark is probably able to spend all his time and money everywhere he can. But again, even if you own huge amount of money today, it doesn’t mean you will get to own them tomorrow. Money is always an ongoing process of achievement. Just look at how a poor person uses his money after he won a lottery, the next minute you will find out that he’s poor again…

I have been working on my WordPress theme for quite a while. Though it is getting to the stage of what I want, the kind of torture it is giving me is not explainable in words. Reading through the WordPress documents and CSS help have been making me quite out of focus in my business. Working too hard on it, it is making me see that I have not been focusing on making things that can bring in my money in the short term.

As always, I have been working on my projects with the long term in mind. With that goal, the short term is wearing me out instead. If you have a very strong determination, you would probably be able to pull through. Or else, it is best recommended to outsource the operations, and start focusing on selling.

Next, I am going to talk about the overload of information about making money online. There are way too many products and services that can help us in making money online. They could be free, or to pay from a small amount to huge amount of money. While these books meant to be good to help you become successful, there are still many people out there who are chasing after these ebooks and not really reading them or to implement them. Spending money to get these things is easy, but when you need to spend time it takes a lot of tears to go through the initial barrier. This barrier is what we called the “learning curve”.

Controlling your time, making budgets of your expenses, focusing yourself on making money instead of spending money. These are some of the things that a successful businessman should do.

The only piece of advice I would give is to spend more time with your buyers, instead of sellers.

I have been working on my own since 2004. Started up various businesses. And in my opinion, they all failed in many different ways. Capital problems, partnership problem, no-business problem, etc. And of all, the most difficult to cope is still partnership. And as of date today, I think the best partnership is to do joint ventures where we all have our own business to take care of, instead of accounting for one another and keep comparing who does more.

So today, I am going to talk about doing business on your own. As I have started working full-time onto internet marketing lately in June 2007, I have come to realize there are many things that we can do to make time work for us. Internet marketing business is something which allows us to do our own business without having to complicate it with partners. I am not trying to say that team work is not good, it’s just that when it comes to working on a business with partners, there are things to be compromised every now and then. And hence, let’s talk about the time management which I had been deriving over the past few years in working on your own business.

Before, I have tried using a time-table to keep track of the things I am doing. I found it not as effective because as internet marketers, we are mostly working from home afterall. When we sit down with our computer, business and personal seem to have merged together and it seems that we tend to do either one more often than the other. Unless you are super-disciplined guy, it is pretty hard to manage time especially when you are your own boss to take care of. Back at work, we have our boss to take care of and hence we have no time to work on our personal things when it comes to work. Whereas at home, nobody bothers to look at what you are doing!

Recently, I have acquired a N95 phone. After I have gotten that, I did a small experiment and realized how well it has organized my time. And I am going to talk about that.

Whenever I am free, my thoughts might sometimes go into work, telling me what I can do to make myself more money. So, I just take note of it in my N95 and gives myself an appointment date to work on it. And then I will just forget about it and take my time to rest.

Everyday, I set myself to work for at least 8 hours everyday like an employee. And when I am working on it, I will start looking at my N95 for any to-do list that I have been assigning myself all these while. I will start to fulfill them as much as I can, and to update myself with the next appointment if I couldn’t find anymore things to do. And when I am free, I will start reading my Google Reader for updates from other people. So long as I am working within 8 hours at least, I am safe to tell myself that I am working towards my goal.

With that in mind, I am glad to generate some internet income for myself. It’s not so attractive as of now because I think I am still lacking of experience and knowledge of many internet marketers. I just wish to carry on reading and learning from other marketers till my income reaches an ideal number. Like I have told myself in this blog, I am aiming to make $10,000 every month. This number seems difficult to reach, but if you take a look at it harder, it seems achievable. Just like Donald Trump mentioned something like this in his book “If you can aim at a target, why not aim higher?”