Charles Lau

I was rushing my way to the Singapore Expo this morning to attend the National Achievers Congress 2008. The atmosphere this year seems to be colder than the rest. As usual, I can still see quite a lot of empty seats around the place. This year, I seem to be seeing a lot of new people in expo. Usually, I will be able to catch one or two familiar faces from the previous congresses.

I had gone through quite a number of them annually. And I must say that this year’s congress is actually not very good today. Other than Blair Singer as the opening speaker on the first day, I am feeling quite bored with all the rest of them. Roger Hamilton’s speech seems to be the same all years round. Steve Linder is still not so bad, but I just feel it’s like reading from Anthony Robbin’s books. At least, I feel so much more motivated, trying to shout for joy during Steve Linder’s seminar. I felt so much better as a whole after focusing a lot of work in front of the computer.

Tomorrow, I am expecting to see better stuff. I will be watching two internet-related speakers. They are Joel Christopher – The Master List Builder, and Adam Ginsberg – The eBay guy. I will also be watching T. Harv Eker and Joe Girard tomorrow.

This review is sponsored by One Click Search Engine.

Search engines have been the main guide of the Internet for many years. Since the born of Yahoo, we have been getting access to the many websites on the Internet that we have never known. At that time, Yahoo has been manually selecting the right keywords for the right websites. Back then, we were taught to add in keywords in our own website’s meta tag. But because of the abuse of using too many irrelevant keywords, this method has been quite unsuccessful. It was until Google came to the rescue with their Page Rank algorithm. Initially, the idea of the page rank system is pretty good to stay here… But as we grow together, we get to see people using black hat seo. (SEO means search engine optimization. Black hat means a violation of the SEO rules which leads you to be banned from Google results.) This gets Google to be on their guard to protect their algorithm and to continue with the trend to improve consistently. But then again, even if you know about the white hat SEO (White hat means to use SEO correctly.) simply means those websites get to rank better than the rest… And overdoing it is almost as good as a black hat…

Introducing One Click Search Engine
Uri Lederman approached me for a review on his recent project on One Click Search Engine. You may like to think of it as a commercial search engine for all of us to use as the keywords are determined by us. This is something which you would never see it in Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engines that are commonly known out there. This search engine is simply showing results which are being paid for. And sponsored results usually mean the websites are either doing business, or are seeking out for an exposure in a different market place that One Click Search Engine is attracting. So when you do a simple search on the keywords, and the keyword is paid for, it will immediately show the “relevant” website as the result. And if it doesn’t show any result, alternatively it will show relevant paid keywords for you to choose from.

Let’s Have A Video Review Of This Search Engine

Doing Business With One Click Search Engine
The interesting feature about this search engine is that any particular keyword(s) is only liable to one website. This totally eliminates the extra work of doing search engine optimization on your website. There is no competition for the same keyword(s). Just remember to pay your dues for the keywords. This sounds like the usual regular payment to the classified ads to your local newspaper or an ad space with yellow pages to gain exposure to the right people at the right time who are searching for you.

Probably you are a businessman who wishes to start something online. You had your website done up properly by hiring the best web designers. You had your products and services ready by acquiring some of the best PLR products and rebranding them according to your marketing expert’s advices. You are ready for business! Out of the sudden, you realize that your website is not really searchable on the Internet (You didn’t know what is Flash but your website is built purely with it!) Your website is simply sitting there like an online brochure for you to reference your customers while you are doing direct selling. Where are all the market in the Internet going?

The above scenario is very common to anybody who is new to doing business online. One Click Search Engine is probably the first website to provide the solution to your situation by providing a similar-to-classified-ads style of placing your ads while using the common way of an Internet user to search with keywords. They don’t have to provide ad space for you. They simply allocate that keyword for you to buy and the result is your website. There will be no reference back to the search engine. It’s now between the visitor and your website.

A Well Documented Website To Assist Advertisers
Uri Lederman was very confident that I will understand this whole website quickly when he first assigned me to work on reviewing his website. And when I went through myself, it was true that this search engine has done a good job in letting its visitors understand its business. Right from the start, I can already understand something about this search engine showing sponsored results.

His FAQ page is actually good enough for me to understand this business structure. And if you are unsure of what keywords to use, he even assisted you by giving you some external links to find out from. Add this page with the pricing structure, we are ready to register for a free account to start with.

Additional Things Beside The Search Engine
I may find it weird to see a search engine that allows us to do social bookmarking. i know that this is one way to bring in the traffic from the social bookmarking websites. It just looks a little weird that I can bookmark a search engine.

This search engine has a blog as well. Blogging is also another way of attracting traffic from other search engines because they love to crawl for new articles. This blog can become a good marketing exposure which helps to build relationships with the advertisers and searchers on the Internet.

This search engine also has an affiliate program for interested parties to refer sales. Personally, I think this is a very important step to bring in more advertisers. And if this affiliate program catches the eye of a high profile internet marketer, I believe things will start to look good in the prospect of this search engine since this search engine relies a lot on traffic to provide for both advertisers and searchers.

My First Impression As A Searcher
When I first look at the search engine, I was wondering why they need to boast about being the first pay-per-keyword search engine advertising network. This has nothing to do with me. They even give remarks that the three major search engines are producing unrelated search results. And below, they talk about their technology which comes with users’ feedback. Only then did I realize that this search engine is a self-service search engine where you buy your own keyword, And if the keyword is not found, it will show other relevant paid keywords for you to choose from. It even urges you to buy this keyword if you are the webmaster or the advertiser. With this in mind, I am determined that this is a commercial search engine.

A Commercial Search Engine
Search engine is a pretty big project by itself. There is a huge programming work to be done at the backend. There is also a lot of marketing work to be done to attract both the advertisers and the interested users. Not only these two major work require lots of attention, people got to have the habit of going to their favorite search engine (because it keeps on producing promising results). In my opinion, it really doesn’t matter if this is a sponsored search engine or a natural search engine. The most important thing over here is to have a good search engine to produce great results for us. And to have great results, it simply means that there are enough number of advertisers for the search engine to produce sufficient results. It can really bore me down if most of my searches are giving me no result. Is One Click Search Engine ready to bring in swarms and swarms of traffic?

What I Like About This Search Engine
This looks like a pretty good idea to solve the common problem that Yahoo and Google are facing. While the two of them are spending money on providing free results, they struggled to bring in the dollars and cents through sponsored results and other means. And while we seem to have an ideal search engine today which is Google to give us results as accurate as possible, they seem to be wrong sometimes. And yes, we will look at the sponsored results for alternative answers to our keywords.

Having a search engine which allows us to search for sponsored results only, we know that these results are not free. These results are from the advertisers who yearn for a website exposure when you ask for it (keyword search). This is as good as permission marketing. You are not interrupted with other irrelevant results where the advertisers want you to see something that you do not know of.

One Click Search Engine is in favor of giving keywords to advertisers on a first-come-first-serve basis. There will be no bidding war. And they are paying for a period of time instead of paying for every click or every thousand impressions (A good example is Google Adwords.). This means that you can get potentially unlimited number of clicks and impressions for that given period of time for your keyword exposure.

What I May Not Like About This Search Engine
Firstly, it may sound good to invest some money in getting our keywords in this search engine. Unless this search engine is bringing in substantial amount of market exposure with huge traffic, it makes sense for us to wait right now for the traffic of One Click Search Engine to be heavy enough later to start our investment. This actually means that Uri Lederman and his team have to do a lot of work (and I believe they are already working on it) to bring in the traffic for his startup project to make us feel the importance of investing in this search engine.

Secondly, I find it pretty weird to see a search engine which is making loud noises on the front page about itself and demeaning the major search engines. What’s with the live links from his site to the major search engines for? This actually gives an internet newbie a chance to find out about its remarkable competitors unknowingly. And remarkable here means that everybody is able to give remarks about them and they simply enjoy the exposure in both good and bad. See below to see what I mean.

Conclusion
I like the idea of being assured as number 1 in a search engine. It gives a kind of identification. It’s like asking for a chocolate, and I am given Cadbury. Absolutely nothing else. And this search engine is giving us that kind of assurance! When I first looked at this website to prepare my review, I seem to have a missing picture of what this search engine is lacking. It simply delayed my time to think through carefully what’s wrong with this search engine when the whole idea of starting up and getting it to the consumers are good. Then, I have come to realize that this website needs to be crowded with people searching for keywords, and people asking for keywords to be placed with their websites. However, it is currently still at its beta testing mode. This project might take off very well if handled properly, or it might fail miserably in the end. It is definitely still at the infant stage where nobody will know if it will become the next big thing. Good luck Uri Lederman. The rest is up to you to grow this search engine business…

Find Out How One Click Search Engine Can Help You In Getting Your Website Indexed In their Website.

Back in the past where we used to do internet marketing through Google Adwords and writing articles, today’s internet marketing is going to be more than just that. Today’s internet marketing is going to push more into better products. Today’s internet marketing is going to expose even more scam products. Today’s internet marketing is going to be more open-minded than ever before!

I could still remember myself attending internet marketing seminars where those internet marketing experts are telling us about the importance of having a sales letter to sell their one product. After attending one seminar after another, you will start to realize a common trend. That’s to do Pay-Per-Click advertising to drive traffic to your website where you write a long sales letter to sell a product. The product could be done by you, your ghost writer, or even from private label rights. Everybody is crazy over these things and I believe about 20% of the people really made it through to make lots of money out of it. And to make those money recurring, they would build up a list from you guys, and to promote other people’s products whenever they have come across some “really good” stuff.

It sounds pretty good business opportunity to work on. In fact, you have to work with a mastermind group which are working together hand-in-hand to promote one another’s products. That’s definitely a win-win-win situation for product creators, promoters as well as consumers. Because as consumer, we would want to get things that we are interested in. And to buy what we are interested in, the promoters have to know your previous buying records.

Today, things have changed a little.

We are now stepping into a whole new world. Web 3.0 is on its way where internet access can be from all types of technologies. You don’t have to use a computer to surf the internet. One example is myself where I have been using Internet with my N95. Accessibility is everywhere. Especially in Singapore where I am finding almost little or no difficulty finding an internet access (could be free or paid). But you have to get yourself an internet device first. Ok, I am getting out of topic… Let’s move into blogging.

Web 3.0 focuses on being open. Blogging and forums are simply making those traditional internet marketers crazy! Traditional internet marketers tend to use the old marketing technique where the consumers are being blinded from one area, and they slowly upsell them with other stuff with either standard continuity or forced continuity. Think about the old marketing technique where products and services are simply of average standard… Some products are even known as scam because of the lousy quality they are providing. In spite of providing lousy quality, they continue to provide the products simply because there’s no openness about their products.

Do you still remember those sales letters which only give good testimonies? Do you see how the sales letter gives you so much promises that you simply want to click that buy button? How about doing a search about that product on Google? You may see the whole picture!

The old internet marketing techniques rely heavily on the concept of the old physical marketing techniques… The “old” internet marketers have forgotten about their consumers having the same access on the Internet as themselves. I could still remember asking for a price from one retail shop… The shopkeeper told me that they are offering the cheapest… If not for the Internet, I would really think it’s the cheapest… Is it really the cheapest? Google it and you will know…

This world is now filled with even more openness. All thanks to the Internet where many different countries are now more synchronized. I could still vividly remember the difference in the trend that runs so slowly… For example, in the times when Bubble tea was really famous in Taiwan, Singapore is still asking what’s that… I ever asked the boss about his view… And guess what? Because he is one of the first-movers, he already knew there’s bubble tea business burst right after… That’s because it happened in Taiwan… So his whole intention is to get the money and go… Now, he’s in China doing other business…

Many businesses are born because they knew something more about it. That’s very good. But because the Internet has provided a platform which actually teaches almost everything that you can imagine, you might think that their business is out… NO! In fact, the new marketing technique promotes even higher standard of products and services… Scams are getting nowhere… I remember those scam calls on my mobile phone… If not for my internet access, I wouldn’t know they are real scammers to cheat money… I can also remember the van scam where they sell Hi-Fi… The bait was really very seductive at that time… A search on the Internet reveals almost everything…

Do you still remember the days when you work harder than the rest as a salesman, you will make your mark one day? How about spending money on TV marketing which costs you five figures? Today, it’s no longer that kind of stuff where you spend 80% of your time and money to make 20% of your sales… Of course the 80/20 rule still exists in this world… It works in another way in fact… It’s now about focusing 20% of your time and money to make 80% of your money… It’s like those top salesmen and top businessmen where they spend 20% of their time in the office (perhaps just to make sure the business is going smoothly), and the rest of their time with their family… Today, this platform is instantly there if you know how…

I remember the times when I was suffering from information overload of learning how to do online marketing. It was terrible because it seems like there are way too many things to learn from. One guy might be teaching about online marketing in one way, and another guy is teaching in another way. Everybody is trying to get their fair share of their opinions in the Internet. At that time, I was still reading ebooks to learn about the different marketing strategies. It was until I started blogging, I start to see a different story altogether.

As I am a blogger myself, I started to meet various other bloggers from around the world. I got to know their existence and to hear about their opinions about the topic they are discussing about. Initially, I started to get myself really confused about internet marketing. However, when I read even more, it is showing me a more complete set of the whole jigsaw puzzle. It’s like having an incomplete jigsaw puzzle where you don’t know how it will look like, while the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle seem to be correct in one way or another. There is simply no real head-to-tail about getting your education from the internet marketing ebooks even though they might all try to become the complete “encyclopedia” for you to learn from.

There was once I bought an ebook about making money out of Google ads. It got me really excited and I tried it myself. I burnt myself a little, though I made some money out of it eventually. Since then, I started to learn about affiliate marketing. Then, I started to learn about setting up your landing pages to get a better exposure and to build up your own list. Everybody in the Internet marketing world should know very well about the importance of having your own list. This is what we called the permission marketing which is the same idea as what Seth Godin has been preaching to us about.

It really takes a full one year dedication to understand about internet marketing. It’s all about reading and learning from other people’s blogs, ebooks, audios and videos. It also comes with the in-depth experience which you have to go through, or else whatever you have learned would be all in theory only.

In my country, there are still many people adapting to the old marketing strategy. That is to invest a few hundred thousand dollars on advertisements in TV and/or radio. And then base your factory to align with the demand of the mass market’s needs. Because the TV and radio have their appeal to be exposed to the whole country generally, there will be a small percentage of the people who will buy their products. And they will base their effectiveness from there… And if that doesn’t work, they will close shop and forget about the millions of dollars spent on it… Millions of dollars are spent because they have to produce in mass to the retail shops to keep inventory (just in case somebody will buy…).

As I read more and more about online marketing, I can tell you that I am really excited about doing everything online. Refining myself in the skills of online marketing and getting websites up and running, there are simply so many things to expand vertically into a certain niche that you would want to go into.

Information overload is a norm especially in the Internet where the information is simply everywhere. Just keep on learning and you shall get yourself into where you want eventually. It doesn’t matter whether you are doing your own business, or to work for someone on a job. It is all about improving yourself in the end and to provide the best results for that company.

I was doing my spyware scanning today. I noticed how much affiliate links were detected in the cookie area of the browser. It makes me wonder something… If anti-spyware program eliminates your affiliate cookie in your potential client’s browser, does it also clear the affiliate links to buy that anti-spyware program? I think there is a blindspot over here where we have to differentiate between a real spyware and a fake spyware.

We are all doing business on the Internet. Internet is our storefront, and we are doing our best to promote other people’s products for a referral fee, or a commission. On the Internet, we tend to have programs that go against our business such as anti-spyware. Although the true meaning of spyware is to prevent these hidden programs from spying what we are doing on our computer, it has almost nothing to do with our advertisements and affiliate links. In fact, it is because of these things that made some of the programs free to use. If you were to use a free software and you removed their only source of income, these software programmers are probably going to be out of their businesses soon.

Ok, I must admit that I don’t really like those intruding advertisements myself as well. That’s why I have installed an anti-spyware program on my own computer. The main reason is definitely to get rid of those malicious codes in my computer. The secondary reason is to make my computer as “clean” as possible for me to focus on my work.

As I was thinking of those non-internet-based companies doing business, I do realize that the Internet-based businesses are definitely copying the style wholesale into the Internet. Even on the physical business, we also have anti-spam measures by having the option of locking and unlocking the cover of our letterboxes. I was looking at the letterbox on the left, and it reminds me of anti-spam program… These flyers are blocked… I believe those mailing companies have to think of counter-measures so that their business will continue to thrive…

With people trying to promote their products in various means, there are also another group of people trying to prevent them from promotion. It is quite contradicting sometimes. Perhaps, there may have a new company set up as the middleman to work out a win-win-win situation for advertisers, anti-advertisers and consumer.

It reminds me of the recent explanation from Joel Comm about the meaning of forced continuity where he initially adds in $29.95 per month without the choice to stop this continuity. At that time, it is only when you click on “cancel” where you don’t wish to buy his $9.95, then you will be offered to buy just the $9.95 ebook. Ever since the recent argument online, Joel Comm has changed it for us to choose. By the way, I really think that Joel Comm is a nice guy.

Do you still remember KC HUT? He’s the guy I reviewed quite some time ago about making forums work for you in Internet Marketing, Well, I have the privilege last night to be given a book to review on his third book about forum marketing. This book is called “Forum Cash“. Basically, his definition of forum marketing is to market yourself in the existing forums. He is not referring to setting up your own forum. Initially, I got myself confused for a while before I clarified with his first ebook about Forum Marketing.

This new third book that he has created is actually providing a series of quick and straight-to-the-point tips. If you have been doing internet marketing for a while, the tips will be useful to add on to your business ideas. KC has safely assumed that you already have some knowledge about Internet marketing. A lot of Internet marketing terms in the book are used as KC focuses his attention on explaining the tips to be executed. You may be lost along the way because you may not know how to establish a business relationship on the Internet.

If you are still new to internet marketing, these tips might lure you to start one. But I must warn that newbies may become dangerous if they didn’t handle the tips properly… It’s like lending a knife to a small child to use. Knives are useful to cut fruits, and create small bites of food or even nice shapes. So if you are still a “baby” learning about internet marketing, this might get you into trouble… If you don’t believe me, go ahead and buy it since it is tagged at a low price of less than $20. Maybe you can prove me wrong by following the tips very carefully… Or maybe you are cheating by asking KC for more help! Anyway, he is offering his help to his readers.

Initially, I wasn’t in the mood of writing his review first since I have to work out on another review which has a lot of great products to read on. I was thinking in my mind “KC, please queue up.” So I was about to reject him when I thought of just opening that ebook to see what he has to talk about… To my astonishment, this book is just filled with tips and nothing else. Very simple little book to read on. A book with 100 pages may not be a good book. For those of you who want to read long stories, this book is NOT for you.

But if you want to read only the juices, it seems like KC has grabbed a very nice little sub-niche in writing straight to the point! Not only that, he also has a niche of being a forum marketing expert… No stories to read. Just the tricks to learn and implement. In fact, the only time he’s writing a little story is when he is putting in his background and signing off with a conclusion.

Find out about his ebook on “Forum Cash” now to make money quickly through forums.

Sales letters are meant to be used to pitch people to understand their product and to buy. However, when you have been in this business for a long time, you have gained a trusted name in the Internet arena. Many of us have been quite used to seeing sales letters. And they all seem to appear in a standard format, especially for newbies. As for seasoned players, they tend to treat copywriting as their playground to expand their imagination. They have the ability to juggle the sales letter to make it more interesting for us to read.

Human Nature as We Are Taking Things For Granted
Today, I wish to discuss more about Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets. Well, it is not really his mistake that most of us here are not aware of his charge of $29.95 per month. Most of us here are starting to trust his name on the Internet, and so it is common for us to skip reading the long sales letter and buy the ebook as it is. Especially when the price is really good, we all would think that there might be a bait later on. (Which is true that he has some really good stuff to upsell.)

Well, we are taking for granted in reading a sales letter. Some of us are more aware of the upcoming $29.95 than others because they might have actually read almost everything, word for word. Many sales letters are way too long for us to really read through as our eyes get to tire along the way and we are convinced to buy and so we skip to the bottom to proceed with the buy. And when we see the total price is $9.95, we will just click and buy since he is reputable enough. His name is a testimony by itself.

Why We Seem To Know Him When We Have Not Met?
When a person gets more famous, his every move will tend to be “watched” by people who are concerned. Why are we concern about him? That’s because we learn some stuff from him and look up to him as our role model. All the more, he has to more be defined in his words or else he will be marked.

It’s very similar to any famous singer who says anything to the media. Maybe she will say like “I feel like looking for a boyfriend.” Her words might even be published on the newspaper, saying that she is looking for a boyfriend. Who really cares about her looking for a boyfriend? She is just a singer… But in actual fact, it’s because she’s famous enough to be noticed.

Or even, if a famous singer says something wrong or misleading in the public, everybody will start to talk good and bad things about her. So what if they were talking about her? Does it really affect their lives? Well, not really… Especially when you have totally no relationship with her.

Oh well, just some thoughts for a while.

It will be foolish of any internet marketer to be oblivious of what the bloggers and twitters and everyone else giving bad comments about his sales letter. And I think Joel Comm is pretty much experienced in handling such matter as it is all about customer service here. He has created a reputation of himself for being the Adsense Guy. He has been portraying himself as the nice guy. And he has got himself into trouble with his unforeseen copywriting style of leaving out his recurring cost of $29.95 per month. This is a follow-up of my previous blog post about joel comm scam website.

Until now, I have not cancelled my membership of paying $29.95 per month. Since he has the intention to let me see what he has to got, I will be more than welcome to check out that free issue of Top 1% report. Perhaps it is really good stuff since he is paying off his pocket to have his report delivered all the way to Singapore for me to review. I am one who is open to opportunities so long as it is investing on my focus – that is to be an internet reviewer.

I do appreciate people who offer to give a bait for me to hook on before I got myself emotionally attached. But his previous method – of not showing the hidden cost of paying $29.95 every month in his Product Order Information table at checkout – is simply making me like a fool like what Mark from 45n5.com mentioned in his blog post. And yes, he did mention it somewhere outside the ordering table which I missed it and was warned by Mark.

Now when I see his apology page in adsense secrets website, I really appreciate his way of handling this matter. And he is handling it very professionally by writing a web copy of apologizing to the public. He is also going to donate the initial $9.95 sales to charity. Kudos to Joel for doing it so professionally.

You can now see that his order page is showing that $29.95 per month which was previously somewhere else.

He also shows the two options in his sales letter to let you take your appropriate order.

Now, things are clearer in the sales letter of what it has in store for us.

Over at Mark’s update on Joel Comm screwed up in his adsense secrets, I can understand how Mark’s blog readers would react in their comments. There are several points of view about Joel Comm’s reaction… Some good, some bad. Well in fact, there is always a publicity being spread around the Internet whether it is good or bad. So long as you are talking about Joel Comm, he will be on the news everywhere.

If you have been in business long enough, you will understand that there is a common secret behind every entrepreneur who started up their own business. First of all, so long as you are talking about him, it will be fine without caring whether you are talking good or bad. Because there is such a saying “When things get worse, something overwhelmingly good will happen if you know how. And when things are good, there is almost nothing to make it better supernaturally.” In fact, I read something similar from bible to get this inspiration. And interestingly, the bible also indicates that it’s not about being a bad guy to create bad things on purpose that will become good later. In this case, Joel Comm has mistakenly trying a sales letter which is probably a new copywriting style he is adopting.

If anyone who is not as experienced as Joel Comm to handle such a negative feedback from bloggers, he might be left in the blank not knowing what to do next. Or probably, he will just give up this project. Or even to quit the whole business. A businessman must be able to solve problems as it comes along. And the solution must be able to help the business. And by the way if there is no problems, there will be no business to do anymore…

Well, thanks Joel again for the clearing up.

Here’s my affiliate link to find out more about his $9.95 ebook on adsense secrets.

I received a feedback via email from Kopitiam food court and the Service & Quality Executive answered to my bad experience I had with great care and concern. The person-in-charge has done a lot of things before he finally followed up with me to let me know of his investigation. (Sorry, I don’t know the executive’s name is a “he” or “she”. So for convenience sake, I will assume as “he”) The operation manager has actually reprimanded the two aunties, and they are being sent for customer service retraining. For that, I believe Ron Kaufman has no business for this anymore. He has also arranged to forward my feedback to his supplier for further action. Then, he also offered me a complimentary dessert of my choice.

This time round, I felt really good after they have done so much for a customer. This action they have taken is very similar to the solutions I have described in my post about “How to handle an erroneous customer even if you are right?“.
Now, I know they really take customer feedback seriously. I believe that their business will continue to soar to the next level as they continue to have high standards stringently.

I really appreciated their actions taken. In fact, I actually thought of not writing to the management because my frustration actually subsided as I wrote the words in my mobile phone. In the end, I decided to send my message and forget about it. Never did I know they actually did a series of follow-up which really made me really appreciated. I must admit that I may be in the wrong because I may have a different taste bud from the three of them who tested it. Or maybe, I have the same taste bud with my girlfriend.

As for the two aunties, this may have two different extreme cases resulting from their actions:

1. They will become an even better staff with quality service.
2. They will start to have a negative working attitude on the frontline.

Staff with good working attitude will result in a better performance and they will keep on improving in their working experience. Staff with bad attitude will simply stop learning and will never excel.

Now, I can really see Singapore is definitely improving in its customer service.

For the past few days, I have been busy working on reviews, my new blog design, learning about wordpress, reading ebooks to be reviewed, while accompanying my girlfriend. I also started studying on copywriting, and writing CSS stylesheets. To portray myself to be a better internet reviewer, I have to polish up myself in the various skills every now and then so that I can be a qualified reviewer. In fact, I have been reviewing mostly on the websites and their products and services. Which makes me think that I am more like a Internet Business Reviewer. I like this term as I get to review online businesses. I am trying to stay away from reviewing technically because if a website is selling well, technical issues don’t really matter a lot.

Internet marketing itself can really be confusing if you don’t grasp the skills correctly. When you first read about Pay-Per-Click marketing, you might think that this is a great trading business to work on with zero inventory since you can simply do affiliate marketing directly. But again, if your ad copy isn’t well done, you are going to spend more money than you can actually make. It is no doubt to be a good business to work on once it is converting well, but such business is not long lasting because of trend and that if you don’t own the list who buys, you are going to re-do everything from scratch again when you are looking for another trend of products to sell.

And when you try to optimize your website for search engine, it can be frustrating if you see your search results ranking up and down. The best optimization is to do it once properly, and forget about it. This way, you will focus yourself more on the retention of potential customers, rather than to focus on bringing in new visitors with very high bounce rate. Bounce rate means that a visitor will tend to get out of the website within a few seconds or so.

I read about an article recently about starting up your business by setting up your website as a blog, or as a traditional information site. Studies have shown that there is a higher bounce rate when a person arrives on a blog from anywhere. That’s because the article is being dated and if the date happens to be very old, it can be perceived as an old article which is rendered as redundant. Whereas if you start your business as a traditional themed website with information, you tend to retain the customer as he reads through your theme while clicking through from pages after pages. To some extend, I agree that this is quite true. But to get good traffic from the search engines and to keep the visitors from coming back again and again, you might want to set up a blog because of the huge consistent contents which keep coming in. Search engines simply love new contents every time. Keep them happy, by keeping your new visitors happy as well. To set up a real theme website, you could actually incorporate a blog as a sub-directory in your website. This should get the best of both worlds.

Darren Rowse was telling me about the competitiveness of making money online. And that many make-money-online blogs are doing flipping business in the end. Just take a look at how many people are doing flipping business for the last five months. All of us are finding that niche in us to be different in our own way. We have to be different in one way or another. Don’t just copy word-for-word from other people’s business as though they are your franchise master. It could lead into bloodshed just like my friend I know personally who is now complaining to the Google about the copycat to his website and compete for some similar keywords in Google Adwords. Even the ad copy is the same!

I have been active in my twitter account. I got to know quite a number of reputable friends online and they are sharing with me things on twitter. We all give our two cents worth of thought in our twitter every now and then.

Ok, it’s time 12.10am. I am sleeping now. Going to wake up and work on my reviews.