Charles Lau

I have been researching and working on starting Internet marketing on a corporate level. It has become dawn to me that corporate companies tend to know a lot about Interruption marketing just because it is more scalable. To a certain extend, interruption seems unavoidable since that’s the first approach to any stranger out there. But these companies have obviously overlooked one point which make them part of the same world out there.

Every company is very driven by sales. It is the only way which makes or breaks a company apart. Everybody wants to make easy money by working for a big company, trying very hard not to lose and in the end, they made their lives miserable. Whereas those people who are very motivated in a company, are those who are trying very hard to WIN! There’s a great difference between these two phrases. I do realize that most of the people are working very hard not to lose. And that’s because they think of working as a chore more than a satisfaction.

While the sales team are very motivated to win because they are very driven by their commissions, the fixed salaried personnels are trying very hard not to lose.

The reason why this point is mentioned is because the interruption marketing has made in measurable for a company to grow consistently. Though the profits may not be as huge because of the enormous expenses on interruption marketing, it is sufficient to keep a company alive and growing.

In the big companies’ world, they only think of how many people they can interrupt in order to make sufficient sales. The huge leverage on the TV advertisement has made it possible to interrupt more than half a million people. The huge leverage on the newspaper advertisement is possibly interrupting about half a million people in just one day. (Singapore’s estimate)

It is like wearing properly in a shirt and tie with pants, and start approaching every girl in a pub for a wedding proposal. Once he is done, he will have a very small percentage of people who likes him. So that’s measurable to him. And he will keep on approaching in other pubs. And when one pub returns no result for him, he will start to blame on his tie not straight, his pants not ironed properly, or probably the girls (market acceptance) are not interested in him (product). (Story extracted partially from Permission Marketing (affiliated link), authored by Seth Godin)

Permission marketing still requires to take one small little interruption to the strangers, and provide huge leverage because of its probably viral effect. There is no choice since it is the only way to say “Hello” to any stranger. But permission marketing is more likely to win. Taking the same example as previous paragraph, this same guy starts to focus on a certain girl to date her out, understand her better and making communication to work. That’s when the permission is granted for further progress, instead of talking about number game.

Have you wonder why some people don’t seem to work better in sales? When they faced a rejection in sale, they feel sad about it? That’s because their sales managers have probably told them “So what? Next! It’s all about number game…” And if they could catch the ball about interruption marketing, they will start to believe in this system. And those who couldn’t catch the ball, thought that they are not qualified as a sales person. Well, if only they know this thing called permission marketing…

I believe any company in Singapore really hoped to have the same kind of “marketing exposure” that Mas Salamat Kastari had. His photo is basically everywhere in Singapore. If you have come to Singapore recently, you would have seen his photograph for at least more than once. It has already become a norm to see his photograph. For the first time in my life, I have never seen such a “Wanted Man” photo posted like this before.

I happened to see a parody of it recently. It is no surprise that any marketer would have thought of leveraging on such an exposure that he could actually create a buzz himself. I saw this “wanted list” at the Orchard car park when I was parking my car opposite Orchard Cineleisure.

This paper is definitely not incidental. He might have thought of doing this interruption marketing many years ago. But with the continual pursuit of Singapore’s most-wanted terror fugitive, this poster is definitely going to get more attention from the public.

Have you all ever had an experience of going to the shop, only to be disappointed because it has closed? I think that is very common to all of us. And to me, I am particularly sensitive towards business behavior towards customers because I simply enjoy the process of a business system from ground up. This particular experience made me felt really lousy, and I have really thought of not going back to that shop anymore. Here’s what happen.

By the way, I am a full-time internet marketing executive, and I was working late at HarbourFront Tower on 23rd June 2008. I felt my hair was quite long and messy, so I went to VivoCity hoping to have a quick SGD$10 haircut at QB House. I rushed all the way to VivoCity, and I can tell you that I was really glad to see from a distance that the hairstylists are still there at 9.50pm. Probably I was really late for the haircut. I ran there, and saw one of the employees was just about to turn the shop sign to “We Are Closed”. I went to ask the hairstylist for a quick haircut, she hesitated for quite a while as the other hairstylist showed a crossed hand indicating to her that they have closed. This hairstylist then replied that “We are closed”. I was looking at the other hairstylist for a while, and then looking at my watch. It was 9.50pm.

Please take a good look at this snapshot I got from QB House website…

Ok, I don’t know what time they are closing actually. But it can’t be at the odd hour of 9.50pm. Or unless they are working overtime since 9.30pm or even 9pm. The correct answer from the website shows that they are closed at 10pm.

What I am trying to show you is the power of internet marketing which is so personnal, it can be done at the consumer level! So many companies out there have been spending so much money on marketing themselves, and they thought the minority of complaints wouldn’t be able to spread. I am sorry to tell these companies that the social media networks are growing in strength and there are numerous of them! Most of the big companies even chose to be “blind” and “deaf” about all these things.

All these things are going to change in the very near future… And because of the advanced level of marketing today which is made so simple and easy, products and services will simply become better and better as the lousy ones are going to be closing forever.

I am not really trying to prove who is right or wrong. I could be in the wrong too because they may have a system of closing at 9.50pm and ready to go by 10pm? I don’t know anyway. Anyway, they should not have over-promised their timing. Maybe it’s just those two hairstylists being tired and not wanting to make more money since work can never be completed. Probably I may send a email to them to find out more.

Subway came to the RESCUE!
On the other hand, I wish to thank Subway for staying operational after 10pm because I was so hungry at that time after getting myself angry with QB House. I went to their restaurant, and took Subway Melt meal. Actually, they are closing already when I was reaching there. It happens exactly the same situation as QB House. However, I went ahead and ask politely for a meal. The auntie looked really nice enough and tell me what meal I want, and even told me that they are left with Italian and wheat bread. My heart really melted by her words… What makes me even felt good is that there is no cookies for me to choose from, but the guy offered to went behind to his inventory to fetch me my choices of cookies…

And because of me, the queue for Subway food starts to form up even though they have closed.

I was wondering how they are dealing with the queue, so I stayed quietly at the side to see. I was shocked to see that they are still trying to cater to the queue! It was until there wasn’t anybody queuing that they start to do cleaning up, and that’s when they couldn’t cater anymore. Great service!

I can understand that this is probably happening more on the personal basis by the employees, and it might not be happening in other Subway restaurants. However, this kind of little service can be viral. “Pssst! Subway should be still serving food right now. Let’s go there!” Ok, it might not be a good thing for the tiring employees who worked the whole day. By working an additional 20 minutes, Subway could actually think of diverting their advertising budget towards their employees’ pocket! But it is definitely worthed it since it is gaining exposure by making the customers to spread for them. Isn’t that Win-Win situation where Subway makes a little more money while the customers are helping to spread the Subway brand as a whole? Many companies have been spending millions of dollars just to maintain the people to talk about their series of advertisement!

Working on an online business is not as hard as you think it might be. It only takes you to create a website which you already know, rather to work on a new project which you still are not sure what the contents are. It can be daunting to find out that you are always pursuing information which makes you like an expert, and yet you don’t feel like one. It also can be a real pain to get everything started when you can’t think of any expertise you have, except to learn from the Internet Marketing “gurus” who overcharged you to buy their courses which don’t require any further action from them, except to duplicate the contents.

I had just reviewed EmpireDotCom. I mentioned about the social bookmarkings that he has been self-servicing on his own blog. And now, right after I have done a review, I start to see some bookmarks on my site from Chendong, the creator of EmpireDotCom. What’s interesting is that Chendong has sphunn my sponsored post about his website, and I see another person desphinned it, commenting “Submitting a review of your blog that you paid for … no thanks…………..”. That’s very interesting point I have mentioned previously that he has fallen into again.

I have a feeling that the Web 1.0 marketers have disillusioned many amateurs in their online startups. Those Web 1.0 marketers themselves have done a pretty good job in creating a reputation that they are really expert in the Internet marketing when they want to teach. Well, in fact they have done well to provide such a benefit to their customers. I don’t particularly like Matt Bacak’s way of promoting himself. By the way, he called himself “Powerful Promoter”. I remember clearly that I have unsubscribed to his newsletter, and yet he is trying his luck to send me emails after a short period of time.

In this world where permission marketing comes, my favorite marketer – Seth Godin – has revealed that permission marketing is anticipated, personal and relevant to the people who eagerly want to be marketed. I am a huge fan towards permission marketing because that creates the real lifetime value of customers.

There is a difference between the small companies and the multi-national companies. Small companies focus on cultivating relationship with their customers, even up to the extend of making no money or even lose money for a period of time. But the return is good to make them grow. That’s how small companies especially in Singapore are working towards. You tend to see those “underdogs” making extra efforts to serve you better, while the big companies simply don’t care generally even if you are not giving them business. The mentality of the big companies is all about number game. If they are interrupting 100 people and 5 customers are giving them business, they will spend more money to market towards 100,000 prospects for potential 5000 customers. It sure does make sense to them since they are working on the mass level. It also gives the small companies a disillusion that they have to look for more money to be like the big companies.

However, permission marketing has changed it all. It gives the companies instant access to the customers’ pocket for more money because the customers gave them permission to. So it takes an expert to be personal to his customers because we all know he is an expert. It turned out that he might be having 90 customers out of 100 prospected people!

The reason why those small companies in Singapore remain small, is because they are acting like a big company. They are paying high rents for office space, thousands of dollars on job salary, and miscellaneous expenses. Also, not to forget to buy goods from suppliers! Technology has changed all these. Internet has become the perfect system to work as a small company, and make huge money like a big company. People don’t mind to receive emails because they are checking emails only when they are free. But they will definitely mind people doing cold calling, only to say “Sorry to interrupt you, we are from this company.”

All these things are going to change for sure… And we will start to see a good combination of the three major mediums – Internet, TV and Radio. They are definitely not going to replace the other, but they are customizable to the marketer’s needs.

This post is sponsored by EmpireDotCom.

Make-Money-Online blogs have been around and increasing in numbers every single day. I tend to see more and more blogs doing this just because it seems to be the way to make money online. First of all, they are all exposed to the people who are teaching them how to make money online. Secondly, they have no idea what products or services they can offer. Thirdly, since they have been paying money and learning so hard about making money online, it makes sense to start another topic about making money online.
Before I get into details about this blog which started up since only in March 2008, I have some thoughts about all the new-born make-money-online blogs out there. There is not much marketing vacuum to work on in this topic. Though they have an easier way out to start another such blogs (that’s because the previous gurus have filled up the marketing vacuum and pathed a route for the newbies to follow), it really takes a lot of stamina and time to bring their blogs into maturity where people are beginning to believe in them. And while these new blogs are building up, they are actually giving more credibility to the matured bloggers since they are so established that it is better to be associated with them, than not to. Will this Empire DotCom rise to our expectations while the blogger behind is still working part time? We’ll know in two years’ time… As for now, let’s continue with my blog review.

About EmpireDotCom
I was reading through the contents of this blog. This guy seems to know what he is doing with his blog, even though it is only a few months old. His name is Wong Chendong (also known as C.D Wong), and he started his journey as an affiliate since August 2007, making his first online income of US$375.65 within 4 months. Not too bad. And by the way, I don’t like his background music in his About Me page (even though it is quite meaningful) because it is disturbing me from reading his blog.

Just by reading through his profile, I can feel his passion and that he is really looking into making money online. He is now building up his credibility, and I think he is a very frank person online when he revealed that he is still learning and rephrasing the contents in his own style. This can be a potential niche itself if he can continue to post related topics consistently in the years to come.

The Brand Identity
I like his domain name. I also like his blog interface. It consists of a good mixture of some of the proven blog interfaces used by Carl Ocab, Darren Rowse and John Chow. The three infamous sections on top and below which most of us will look at it naturally since it has been adopted down since Nate Whitehill from UniqueBlogDesigns invented it (I think).

I may not know how, but he has gotten everything done professionally. It could be a blog theme Alvin Phang has done for his atomic blogging product. No, I didn’t buy his product because it was too shallow for me after reading John Chow’s review about it. This theme is definitely optimized to look good on Make-Money-Online topic. There is just one missing picture over here. Probably because I am somehow blogging about internet marketing, I tend to ask myself what niche he is in this broad topic about Make-Money-Online. Hence, I would go to his About Me page, and I was pretty much disappointed to see what he has wrote. Well, he has definitely done a good job to introduce himself, leveraging his contents on the knowledge he is learning from others. That is absolutely ok. But I am wondering what he is trying to teach about. He didn’t cover the purpose of this blog. He basically covers everything, and his About Me page is not telling us any particular topic he is covering.

Or is his brand identity an atom from the molecule called “Atomic Blogging”?

Going Horizontal Market, Not Vertical
Ok, let me explain why he is covering horizontal market. That means, he is basically telling you tips and tricks of making money online. He is not as laser-sharp focused like Alvin Phang, Darren Rowse or Yaro Starak who focused on different levels on the topic “blogging”. That’s probably because C.D Wong is covering the new-born marketers who are looking at how to make money online. And I must give applause to Alvin for his viral effect in the Internet of teaching blogging where his customers actually adopted fully with his branding. Definitely a win-win-win situation for Alvin, Alvin’s resellers, and Alvin’s customers. C.D Wong has really been spoon-fed a lot by Alvin! No wonder it is called Atomic Blogging.

Nice Try To Get The Engine Started
I must give some credits to C.D Wong for his time, patience and his passion. Definitely at the very beginning, the website is like an empty shell. It’s like a chicken-or-egg story here. Do you have the supplies for the potential demand out there? Or do you have the demand for your potential supplies? Whichever the way, just get the blog started and talk later.

Somehow, I feel he should have waited for a little while longer before getting brand awareness by getting reviews around the blogosphere. But definitely, it is good to get it from the lower entry levels first since it is an unlimited source of potential referrals. Probably he has reached to the stage of knowing what he doesn’t know and filling it up the gaps. And now, he is trying to find out what he don’t know about at all. That’s where the entry level bloggers tend to give a better next-stage thoughts. But anyway, I still must say that he has a better blog design than mine right now.

Centralized Around Marketers, Not Engineers
Over here, C.D Wong mentioned a lot about Ewen Chia, Joel Comm, Russel Brunson and others. These are great marketers, though I don’t really like the way these three guys marketed. I remembered the times when Mark from 45n5 and I were responding heavily towards Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets which has a recurring charge that was previously not shown in the ordering table. They are definitely great marketers, and I would like to classify them as Web 1.0 marketers who used traditional ways of paying lots of money in Pay-Per-Click to bring in the traffic, and then wait to see results… It looks so similar to the big companies out there who are spending millions of dollars in advertisement and yet they will never know how effective it is. But of course, Pay-Per-Click lets you know the effectiveness… It can cost about tens of thousands of dollars every month just to arouse brand awareness.

But after playing around in the Internet, I would prefer to connect to those Web 2.0 marketers via twitter, blogging, friendfeed and other social networks. We no longer need to depend on search engine marketing solely for our traffic generation.

This blog is definitely focusing around marketers where we speak about marketing, and not engineers. Well in my opinion, he has done pretty well here.

Smooth transaction for the beneficial visitors
He has made it smooth for the visitors to get what they wanted. If you want to subscribe to his secret newsletter, it is there. If you wish to subscribe to his RSS feed, you can enter your email address. He seems to have abolished the anonymity of the RSS subscribers by cutting off the smoothness to get that feed url. Instead, his anonymous RSS subscription clicks are found at the end of every post in the blog.

Focusing specifically on Digg and Del.icio.us as the official bookmarking sites for this blog, that’s smooth. But I personally think StumbleUpon is a much better traffic generation not to be missed. So for StumbleUpon users, this is not smooth. You can only either use your StumbleUpon toolbar, or to go back to your stumbleupon website to get what you want.

What’s With All The Diggs?
While he is still creating a buzz behind using the Digg traffic, he seems to have actually dugg every single post he has in his blog. Well, I personally think that’s not a cool thing to do since it actually depreciates his value in providing to the visitors. Quality posts become saturated. It makes things look so manipulated. Anyway, it seems like it’s getting some diggs along the way too.

Anybody still wants a Link Exchange?
I think it is a bad idea to ask for link exchange. Google identifies this as Link Schemes. John Chow has got himself into trouble and in return, he doesn’t get any search result for his own name even though he has his domain name named after him. Those were the days when he has done a massive link schemes around the blogosphere. He also got himself into trouble with the Technorati ranking too. Whichever the case, it would be the best to focus on building up the contents and bringing in traffic with style!

Would You Be Interested In Article Resource from EmpireDotCom?
A Article Resource page dedicated to show all the various urls of the articles you can find. It looks a pretty cool link for the people who wants to submit their articles. Any explanation to the market for these article sites? Because of the kind of target market EmpireDotCom is focusing, I think this article resource might be a redundant. It is definitely useful for the internet marketers who are more seasonal. You would probably need a post to explain about it. (Or it could be in a series of posts as well.)

I would actually suggest a page focusing about “Recommended Money Makers” might be a better choice to guide the beginners where to start, and how to get started.

Advertising On EmpireDotCom
If you take a good look at the advertisement page, C.D Wong simplifies the whole advertising page by showing you the stats. The stats may be good to see, it is just too boring. While it is a well-known fact that google does a Page-Rank slap to many of the bloggers (including myself), it is often used by bloggers who still have something to show. The value proposition is actually very blur if he were to continue to leave it like this.

People will only know the few numbers that he provided. What the advertisers wanted to know is the target market he is focusing on. Whether this market is related to the advertiser’s products and services. These two factors alone can tell generally about the conversion rate of the visitors into customers.

Uninteresting Archive Page
So what if he tells me the archives by month, or even by categories which are already provided by the side? As a first time visitor myself, I don’t know what his recommended or top posts are in his blog. Or at least an introduction of a few posts which speaks about the blog which gets me interested. Generally speaking, I may only stumble upon one of his posts from Google as his landing page for me. It might get me interested in that particular article. Then further on, I would want to find out what other interesting articles he may have. Any blogger will tell you that all of his posts are interesting when they have put in a lot of effort in every single one of them till they finally gave up.

Conclusion
On the surface, I would give this blog a good Thumbs-Up for the blog interface, and its seemingly interesting series of posts in the blog. But as I scrutinize further, I start to see some of the things which an amateur is likely to make. And they are so obvious to me.

Chendong, it’s a nice blog you have put up. You must have spent a lot of time and money working it out. It definitely has lots of room for improvement. One last thing before I close, I think you better add in your RSS link to that RSS Man who is reading RSS newspaper while sitting on a toilet bowl.

Find out if a newbie can teach you make money online with his passion and sincerity.

I am now surfing the Internet, and took a quick shot of myself at the hairstylist salon. Looks quite cool to allow us to wait while doing something more productive. Just like myself who is now finishing a review for Empire dot Com right now.

IPhone is supposed to be able to market to the mass since it can leverage heavily on its company name Apple. However, Steve Jobs seemed to have restricted it by having one exclusive telco company to deal with it. That opens up the curiosity of many people around the world to buy one from this company. It goes the same when it was announcing its exclusivity to Singtel, a Telco company in Singapore.

Apple Dominates One Hive Only
Obviously, IPhone can have the kind of market share like Nokia if Apple were to market it to all the three major Telco companies in Singapore. Though I may not know what they have discussed which arrived to this conclusion, it is nevertheless an exclusive right to Singtel. I believe in the eyes of Apple, they probably are not sure of how well they can penetrate into the Asia market if they were to work on this deal. Hence, they seem to have adopted the Seth Godin’s ideavirus by dominating one hive and become the very best in that hive first. And as time goes, it will start to spread to other hives to come along attracting to it.

Singaporean Companies are Crazy over Exclusivity
But in the eyes of most SIngapore companies, they always have the thought of having that exclusivity. That’s because having the exclusive rights, they thought they are going to dominate the market (which is probably right in one way or another). It is especially true when the market has already been educated of its existence and how it works. It may be true for IPhone since Apple has managed to bring the message across the world just by selling IPhone exclusively in one Telco only.. And Singtel is the lucky chap to get it… Another huge wealth is going to transfer to Singtel pretty soon…

A lot of trading companies out there have been trying to bring in OEM products which are not sold elsewhere and brand it out in the hope of becoming a famous brand. Never did they know that having that kind of product, it has to bring across an idea virus around that your product is really good and is found no other places. By putting those products in shelves around, trying to sell them for a profit just like that, I seriously think it is so naive… And it probably only works in 2 companies out of 10. That’s 80/20 rule here.

Why These Singaporean Companies Never Make It Big
If you seriously take a good look at the existing SME companies around Singapore, you will start to see that they have something which they are proud of. But it doesn’t seem to bring them to become millionaires.

Simple equation about making a profit out of your business

(Num of buyers) * (Num of repeating purchases) * (Average Price of Your Product) = Your Sales

That is to say that you not only lock into your existing customers to buy consistently, you also have to continue looking for new customers and even more products of higher values. If not, the only way is to mark up or mark down your price according to your demand/supply.

If You Can’t Win Your Competitors, Join Them!
There is something called joint ventures with your competitors where you can both upsell one another’s products for a referral fee or on an exchange of database. That is to say that it is not about having the exclusive rights to sell it by yourself. You will start to have different sources of income from your same product. What’s the big deal about fighting over each other’s products, price and services?

Apple Is Adopting A Strategy Which Is Very Simple, Yet Profound
By giving only one hive (which must have substantial income potentially), you will start to get the virus that “Hey IPhone is coming! And it’s coming to Singtel only… My M1 subscription don’t enjoy it…” That’s when the curiosity kills the cat and creates a Win-Win situation of bringing in more customers for Singtel as well as Apple.

If Apple were to implement it to all Telcos (Singtel, M1 and Starhub), they may look like one of the many phones out there… Though they are unique product by itself, there are way so many unique products out there already. There’s almost nothing to talk about IPhone except for its unique touch screen and phone features. IPhone’s sales may not be as good in the end. That actually means that by dominating this huge hive only, you get to become the BEST in that hive… Probably there will become a higher percentage of Singtel subscribers using IPhone in the end… But it is definitely not for me yet because I like my Nokia N95 and I am one who wants to fully utilize my phone to the max that I can over the time and durability…

I have a wish…
I have a little wish that Apple IPhone will be able to communicate to Singaporeans out there… It seems to me that mobile phones today are commonly used for phone calling, sms, camera and using the Internet. This recently, I was hooked to buy applications from Handango to enhance my phone usage to the max that I know of. It has been used up to the extent that people might be thinking I am sending SMS, which I am not… I am doing brainstorming of my ideas with my Projekt which I have bought recently and I am really proud of having this software!

It makes lots of sense to have a business with several products and services to sell. It seems to be better if we are able to sell with whatever we have to offer within our reach. That could be the reason why people might get greedy to sell several items under the same business name. Let me tell you why you should focus on one niche as much as you can.

Having one niche simply means that we are going to be an expert in a certain area. It doesn’t really mean you have to sell only one product or two. The idea is to be really focused in the niche that you wish to do. First of all, it gives the overall branding of your business an impact if you keep on doing this long enough to stay in the same industry. Everybody will start associating your brand name to the particular niche that you are in.

Another reason why you should focus on one niche is that you will open up even more market than you have expected. Imagine you selling more than one niche, you are simply converting your potential customers into your competitors. Why? Just imagine you selling computers, printers and even cameras while your competitors are selling only computers… Your competitors might not feel like buying printers from you just because they might think of themselves as a betrayer to their own brand.

Ok, the previous paragraph is more for the market outside the Internet realm.

In the Internet world, all of us tend to think of doing joint ventures with our competitors instead of fighting with one another. So far as I know, I still don’t really see any company outside the Internet realm doing the same thing. That is to say, if you are selling printers in your own brick-n-mortar store, you probably wouldn’t think of a joint venture with another printer seller. In fact, this has been the idea instilled in most of the companies out there.

That is why when we are having a particular niche to focus on, we tend to have more potential customers to buy from us.

Take a look at this simple formula:

(Number of Customers) x (Range of products You Have) = (Sales)

If you wish to increase the number of customers, your range of products should be going down to cater to more potential customers.

And if you wish to increase your range of products, you tend to have lesser customers buying from you.

You might think that this is more for B2B businesses. But come to think about it, the employees that they employed might be mostly loyal to their companies.

As for the Internet, it might be otherwise. That’s because we are all having our own portable business empire. We are simply a one-man show to have fun working while playing at the same time.

Just some random thoughts out somewhere…

Most of us have been trying our best to post on every single day. We make it a point to make our blogs as lively as possible, hoping that our blog might make it one day like Problogger or John Chow. But it never seems to make it in time to keep our blogs as frequently updated as possible. And hence, guest blogging starts to evolve to help us to leverage some of our time to the other bloggers.

I used to blog about 5 posts a day in my first three months of blogging. And it ended up having a lot of blog posts over here. It has definitely helped me to grow over the period to learn more about blogging, and to push myself to learn even more because I have a commitment at Charles Lau dot Com. Everyday, I will tend to think of my blog which I might have forgotten to blog. I tried really hard not to miss any day.

It was until when I reached my 9th month of blogging that I realize more about blogging. As I was reading other blogs in my Google Reader, I start to realize that I don’t really like to keep catching a blogger who has an everlasting flow of posts. Though they are keeping me interested, I seem to be unable to catch up always. I have many other blogs to catch up also. Hence, I tend to appreciate bloggers who have a lesser frequency of blog posts. At least they are still growing strong in their blog, I will continue to learn from them in their own point of view.

Ideally speaking, one post a day is sufficient enough. It makes sense to the blogs when we are going back daily to feed on their contents. It makes sense when I open up my Google reader, only to see a new post waiting for me. But as time to go, it has become dawn to me that I have to keep myself aligned with both business and personal life. Blogging is more like a hobby to me than to slog everyday for it. I started to blog whenever I have an inspiration to share with all of you. I start to dislike zero quality contents, and I have unsubscribed many blogs along the way.

It makes sense for me to read contents that is beneficial for me. It makes sense for me to read contents which I wish to catch up with my fellow blogging friends. It makes sense that we are all working very hard in the blogosphere to build better contents out there.

In most of my time, I have been working very hard for my future, keeping myself at the edge in the internet marketing career that I am in. I keep myself knowledgeable with all the books that I can find from Amazon, thanks to Darren Rowse for introducing me Amazon indirectly. And I wish to take this chance to show all of you what Darren Rowse has bought for me as a prize I have won over when I took a photo of myself with the book.

This book looks pretty good. I am planning to read it through very soon. I am finally finishing my read with Seth Godin’s Ideavirus book. A great book indeed.

I must agree with Darren Rowse’s latest post about the ideal post frequency of a blog. It really depends on the blog style you are creating. And having to increase our post frequency will increase our readership for sure because it has an impact with how Google looks at us, and also to make our existing readers happy.

Well, do you think I really want to post less frequently nowadays? That’s because I am re-planning my blog structure and how I want to present myself to the Internet world. This website is somehow too simple-looking for an Internet Reviewer to work along with. It’s kinda big task. I am thinking of engaging a designer to help me. Any good recommendations?

We all have been seeing bestseller lists everywhere we go. There is always someone who is the top, second and third. And it happens in every industry that you can find. And if that doesn’t happen in your industry, it should happen at anytime now since you have discovered it. In the following blog post, I am going to share with you from my favorite author – Seth Godin – and his ideavirus book which has given me enough inspiration to share his virus to you all.

Common Traits Of A Bestseller
If you have heard about the rich will simply get richer, you must be pondering why it is so. First of all, they are simply becoming richer because everybody just wants to pour money on them. Just think about it. When you go to Amazon and you look for the bestselling books, you would probably buy it too since they are so hot. In other words, you are helping them to score even higher at the top of the bestseller list. And notice that the top will always have quite a distance from the second and the rest. It is very much different from being the top in your exam, sports, or anything that you have to depend on yourself. Being a top seller, it means people are simply spreading news about you that you have the best products and/or services. And if you are a top salesperson, you probably are getting used to getting easy sales from referrals because you have provided an excellent service for them to refer. Or probably you are the only salesperson selling this product.. (Which is very unlikely to happen.) and yet you have done your homework with lots of referral sales.

It is not easy to lose your sales once you have reached the top. That’s why everybody has been working really hard to reach to the top. But nevertheless, it not only drills down to your sales skills to convince anybody to buy, it also voices down to your product or service quality.

Barriers to Become A Bestseller
When you first started out, it is really very hard to sell even your first piece, let alone to become a bestseller. When you are at this stage, it is always good to show people how good your product is by lowering down the entry barrier to access your products. When people start picking up your product and found it to be good, please don’t ever try to increase the price if it is a recurring income in one way or another. Because that’s the reason why they are motivated to pick up your product in the first place. These people are probably your “best friends” of your products as you service them more often. There are two schools of taught when it comes to increasing your price to market rate:

1. You should hold the price very long enough because people are motivated because of your price.
2. You should increase your price now since you are doing a business here and not charity.

But for the sake of the big picture (which is to become a bestseller), price increment is not a good strategy. Instead, it is always good to have your products being remarked so often in the Internet that the first-timers have no choice but to spread the ideavirus for you. That’s when the price at the market rate is most recommended because this is when the demand has exceeded its value.

Some people simply go to the far extend of putting in a lot of expenses for the sake of their product exposure. That is a very good strategy but it is an expensive one. And you can almost get instant results, much faster than the natural marketing method.

Choosing Your Market
It has been recommended by Seth Godin to choose your hive properly. Choose a hive which you can dominate. Choose a hive where you are very likely to become a bestseller. Choose a hive where they are the only ones who have access to. It often makes the people outside the hive jealous and wanted to have it too. When the hive has spread the virus so wide, everybody starts giving you money as well. One area to look at could be your pricing of your product. By choosing a very high price in order to acquire a high quality product, it gives priority people instant access to enjoy your product. It also lets you make probably the same amount of money with lesser work since lesser people are buying it. The key is with the quality…

Make it easy for your customers to spread
It has always been the case where your customers are very much wanted to tell their friends about your fantastic product. But if it takes more than 1 level of work for them to spread, the ideavirus will just stop.

Imagine telling a friend about a very interesting website with a very difficult to pronounce domain name. That friend will probably forget how to spell it and forget about going to your website. That’s where yahoo has reigned through their easy-to-pronounce name.

Fill Up The Vacuum!
You may have found a new market vacuum to dominate.. But if you are not fast enough to fill it up with your product quality and product marketing, you are most likely going to be taken over by another competitor. Just think about Google who also has an easy-to-pronounce name… The reason why Google won the search engine battle is because they have perfected the system to prove themselves to be a better search engine!

Quality of Your Product
I think I have covered a lot of times about the quality of the product. However, the quality of the product is very important in the Internet. That’s because the Internet is a very transparent market. Everybody has their equal standing of giving their fair share of review about your product and service. And if your product is not as outstanding as your marketing strategy, you will lose big time when everybody gets to know how bad your product is!

Again, I wish to thank Seth Godin’s books which I have bought. Here’s my referral link to check out idea virus book yourself.