Charles Lau

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.

In the new way of Internet marketing, everybody is very used to buying Pay-Per-Click advertising to measure their Return-On-Investment by sending massive relevant traffic into the website and see how much it converts. While that way works perfectly for many people, it didn’t work out well for most of us because of the incapability to write a good lead captivating ad which converts more qualified visitors into a high-quality sales-converting website… In the end, many of us have burnt our hands playing with pay-per-click advertisements.

The Usual Free Traffic
While that might be true to most of the people playing with Pay-Per-Click, many of us know about the free traffic that we can capture through the various efforts that we made on the web. We can write quality articles online… We can write good blogs online… We can write good comments on other blogs to capture the attention from the visitors… We can reply good postings on the forums to capture the attention of the mass…

The Better Free Traffic
Now, everybody knew about it… We have our very own Facebook to start with our new marketing strategy… Facebook is a highly addictive website with people visiting it to keep up with their scores and friends in it… Facebook has opened up a whole new market for us to get into it as a user as well as a developer to capture the attention of the visitors. You could think of a new application relevant to your business which can capture the attention of relevant users and to keep them in the loop because they chose to be in your list! And because they have chosen to be in your list, they can either proactively promote your business to their friends, or they can show off your business in their profile to create a viral marketing effect in both passive and active way!

The Video Marketing Traffic
And yet the Internet has not forgotten about showing our very own personality where we can show our faces and actions on video… It’s highly viral when you mix it properly with the social websites like Facebook or in the blogs… And if you can do a contest which you would want to see people embedding your video, you can promote even more traffic from other blogs without having the bloggers to think and write what they think about you… It’s more effective this way…

The more active you are, the more the Internet is going to work for you… Many tools have been surfaced up just for you to use to market your business in both paid and free methods… They are mutually exclusive from each other… And they are more likely to compliment with each other if you can mix and match the two sets of tools properly for your website! Enjoy!

While we are all working really hard to get our site up and running, we can’t deny that we are actually re-inventing the wheel which others have been working so hard for. What’s the use of re-invention when you can leverage on someone’s proven invention? Invention takes time and money to cultivate. And it probably makes your website unable to work in the long term in the end because of cashflow problem even though it seems that you are doing well on the surface!

Forms of Business Leverage
When we are talking about leverage, we are talking about re-using the existing visitors that they have in many forms:

1. Additional value-added services which is beneficial to the existing customers.
2. The more difficult-to-deal-with customers to be referred and enjoy other company’s services.
3. Modifying the existing services to give an even better products and solutions for the customers.
4. Giving the customers more choices according to their preferences of budget or criteria.

Taking care of your operations efficiently
While it may be a good thing that we can leverage on another business for our business to create a “shortcut” in our business progress, many companies might just afraid you might screw up the whole business if you don’t have a proper plan of managing huge volumes of business. Making money is the result… But the process of attracting the money must be right by giving the right values that they want efficiently.

When a company is dealing with only a few customers, it might be feasible to charge only a small fee since it is manageable within the company’s expenses. But when there’s huge volume, there might have a change in the company’s pricing criteria because of the need to pay for additional manpower. Hence, a small company might be good to provide for the big company’s customers only to a certain extend…

Making things to work comes in big picture and small picture
While many people tend to complain because of a certain small problem, but because they might not have seen the big picture which will then ease their mind about the small picture’s problem. Always look at the business from the bird’s eye view as well as the human’s eye view!

How To Start Leveraging?
I saw a big-time blogger (I think it’s shoemoney) recently looking into employment for admin to handle his daily work. This is a good time to start leveraging by working for him. Instantly, you get to learn some of the things he might be doing all along.

Another way, it’s to do a joint-venture where you ask a big-time blogger with a business proposal to attract the visitors in his blog. That’s a way of bringing in traffic to your blog… However, you have to make sure your blog is ready to accept traffic and to convert them into your loyal readers!

Or else, you might want to start by putting advertisements on big-time bloggers’ website. That’s a way which is only seeing yourself as a passive blogger who may or may not have a plan…

Why re-inventing the wheel when you can buy a wheel yourself?

This is a follow up post from Pass The Gmail Message in Video! Finally, the final video has been done up with the help of the world doing their part to create a gmail video to pass the message… It is totally an ingenious idea that Google team has thought of to leverage on the public to create a publicity to the rest of the world who hasn’t used gmail yet… While the members of the public work out their 10 second video of passing the message from left to right, Google is in charge of picking out the best and make a collaborative video together…

This is the final video..

What a fantastic video collaboration over here! Another great video marketing idea being produced…

Two large waves of video spreading about Gmail:
1) It consists of viral marketing of the collaborative video on Google’s part,
2) and even 10-second segments of the video created by different people are being spread with their individual comments!

When a short 10 second video, it is given great publicity to both gmail and its contributor… Everybody simply loves it! Click here to see 1168 video responses!

I personally like this part which is not shown in the collaboration…

There’s one very powerful marketing outside the world of blogging happening on the Internet… Something which is already on the net being utilized by many of us already… But it just caught my attention when I was on a lookout for more marketing ideas. That’s what YouTube called it “Video Responses”. Yes, you might tell me that you knew about it already… But just imagine you able to capture the market instantly…

There’s one girl on YouTube who seems to be having fun talking to the world with video. Being able to tell the world something and asking for responses, that’s what many businesses has been paying huge amount of money to do it! Her name is Emmalina. While many blogs out there have been doing blog contests, she is doing a Video contest, offering just $5! And people just response to it!

Take a look here.

And below are 3 of the many responses she has received! Click here for more!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsYRZZeB1q4[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Ps06n7U_0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUMODlbQ9Rw[/youtube]

What’s so amazing is that if a person is able to hold a contest successfully over YouTube, it means that there is a potential of getting to the mass which could be faster than just blogging! It is amazing to see how marketing can be done from Video responses! It is nothing new, but it is definitely worth to look at to get a bigger market share in your blog or other forms of website!

While there are many forms of marketing online, video is something viral! Just imagine when I start to talk about Emmalina over here… You can be the potential market for her to look at when you find out more about her! Being able to embed videos on websites is the most powerful marketing tool ever created… Thanks to YouTube…

Let’s take a look of how we can make the best out of this powerful tool in blogging world which I am experimenting now. We can call for a contest on our blog, and letting the people in YouTube know more about the contest and participate by commenting… Or even a Video Response on their blog, linking to your blog!
Look at how many market openings you have created…
1. Your own blog
2. Other people’s blog
3. Your own video on YouTube
4. Other people’s YouTube response

With four openings to your contest, you will be able to see how many more other openings it can create when people start to embed your video code on their blog talking about how cool your contest is!

I might be a little out-dated in the area of vehicle racing… I have only seen car racing, bike racing and boat racing. Bus racing is telling me something about doing business with a twist, in spite of bus racing could have been around for quite some time already. Business is always very flexible, it is the human being who might be the one who is not flexible! What makes a website different from its competitors? Let me tell you, it’s the man behind who made the difference!

Ok, before I carry on, let’s have fun watching bus racing in this video! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pzOuzV8iF0[/youtube]

I was totally excited by how the buses tried to overtake the other in such a small gap! While it might be logically impossible, they actually did it! And there’s a scene where the three buses squeezing together to get to the front!

The moral story behind this is that you will start to see that it is possible to start a totally new business with a possibly huge market right from the beginning! How is this so? Let’s see step by step below:

1. Use an existing working business.
2. Think of a twist around the same business with probably the same target market.
3. You will see a whole new business born with almost effortless marketing necessity!

Something about racing in my opinion…

• Car racing has been around for quite some time. I remember watching on TV how formula one is racing… They are really fast!
• Then, I start to see stock cars racing… They raced almost the same way as formula one in a high speed track.
• Then I start to see slippery tracks where the stock cars start to race in the manner of one-on-one. They used drifting techniques to cross the curvy slippery tracks which creates a whole new peak for the game!
• Then I also see bike racing… They can also drift! I didn’t know that…
• Then there is this boat racing…
• How about bus racing???

Sometimes It Is Just a Chemistry Mixture Of 2 Businesses or more

• Who knows that a cone is used to store the ice-cream, and packaged as ice-cream cone?
• Who knows of providing food to eat and comfort to sit while you are on the airplane? And that becomes part of the different class of flight to take… First Class, Business Class and Economy Class…
• Who knows about providing a paper roll (called Toilet Paper) for the toilet use?
• Who knows about providing document delivery service after also helping to print your Adobe PDF document? (See this)
• Who knows about making a food delivery to your doorstep while you are watching World Cup? (Newspaper about my food delivery)
• Who knows about providing spare part business after you have bought your car?

Just look at how much you can do to twist the existing business into a new business, or to have a chemistry relationship with the existing business. Sometimes, you don’t have to think of a whole new business really unless you have too much money to spend to try them out!

As I was searching for an audio tool, I stumbled upon a website called AudioTools. On the main product page, the director declared the closure of his business. And I find it a waste to do such a hash decision when his product seems to be quite well-known on the Internet with his product page page-ranked at 5, and there are many sites which are actually providing a cracking solution to use his software without paying for it. In my opinion, that actually means his audio program has already received a lot of attention on the Internet! Yet, he just declares shutting down completely… What a waste…

Good and Bad Problems
While there are many problems any business will face along the way, there are such things as good and bad sale problems.

• Good sale problem usually refers to problems which demands exceed supplies! For example, when you have have a lot of buyers (or even just potential buyers) wanting to get the product so much that they are trying ALL means to get it, it is up to you to manipulate how you want to supply it.
• Bad sale problem usually refers to problems which supplies exceed demands! For example, you have lots of leftover goods which are not possible to sell away to the same market unless you think of a way to sell it cheaply or to give them away as free gifts altogether.

Charles Analysis
While the AudioTools might not be as profitable as he has mentioned, he could have taken advantage of the situation to do something out of it, instead of just giving it up altogether because of piracy as well as his disinterest in working on AudioTools anymore… If he is no longer interested, he might actually sell his business for a fee to shut down… Especially he has two assets right now… His good software and his PR5 website.

People are willing to crack his software only because he has a too-good piece of software that there is a great demand for it. Of course he will naturally want to buy a protection system to counter theft… But if he can’t afford it, there is always alternative ways to get around it. Let’s see below how to do it…

Business Suggestion 1
For a situation like AudioTools, he could have worked his site to be something like Unlocker, where he used Google Adsense to monetize his site for his “two million times of software downloads” that he has claimed. Having a freeware website that has so many downloads, I believe the number of visits to that site is even more than that as not everybody will go there and download it. And while Unlocker don’t seem to provide support which is reasonable for a freeware, the Unlocker author is enjoying cashflow effortlessly now. “Well, it is okay not to make your software open-sourced…”

Business Suggestion 2
Since he already has a PR5 website, he could make used of the same website to upsell even more relevant software either for free, as an affiliate, or even as a reseller.

Business Suggestion 3
He could do an email list capture of people who wish to download his software for FREE, where he is able to follow up his support with the list and to refer some of the good affiliated products that he thought might interest his subscribers. This way, he has effectively started his own ezine subscription.

Conclusion
Whichever way it is, I just think that it is such a waste if this software is really highly-sought for when he refused to continue anymore… Just a thought to any potential business buyer out there, you might want to buy this business at a low price since he is already giving up. Well, I don’t know if he is willing to sell since I guess he is really that frustrated in his words in the website.

I was doing a casual surfing on the Internet when I found this PageRank-5 site “Woman. Dating. Safer. Smarter. DontDateHimGirl” which claimed to be attracting more than 550,000 unique visitors every month, over 1 million subscribers, and 75,000 incoming links. It is also featured in hundreds of media outlets around the world including CNN, The New York Times, The Today Show and the Washington Post. It also claims to be ranked higher than Oxygen.com, Cosmo.com and VictoriaSecret.com.

Very Unique Common Idea
While many people are doing dating websites, they are doing a counter of the many dating sites out there. Quite a good niche, with many expandable options where they can give advices, run a poll, start another dating site themselves with better guys, discussions such as how to fight fairly in your relationship, and even referring lots of relevant affiliate products along the way!

Alternative Dating Idea
This is not exactly a website review, but it is a business idea which is possibly going to work out in a very big way. Or there might be alternative business ideas such as “How to Choose A Dream Girl truly online?”. Or “How To Protect Yourself From Online Dating?”. There are just many new possibilities of such affiliate websites which can be done since the number of online social websites are increasing, with huge traffic coming in every single day!

Paid Marketing
And you might want to increase your traffic by having relevant advertisements on those social websites as well. I believe it will be more cost saving to put your advertisements on such websites since the traffic is huge, and the advertisement is usually fixed on a monthly basis when compared to Pay-Per-Click campaigns.

Potential Profits
While it might be possible to profit from Google Adsense since the number of people who might come back for more is going to be huge, the website owner has taken advantage and put up an advertising option for any interested people out there. They are pretty much professional in their work in this website. I am just wondering who that powerful internet entrepreneur is… Can anybody tell me if you know?

Highly Interested Niche On the Internet By The Visitors
The website is done with a very closely niched focus so that interested people will just come back out of leisure, or even participate in the activities. Somehow in this website featured, I don’t feel myself unfamiliar with the website structure and that I got myself familiarized pretty fast. That’s probably because the person behind must have been an experienced web master and will know what to do with the new visitors as well as entertaining the returning visitors.

Conclusion
Just another thought of a business idea in my mind. I hope you enjoy it. But do remember that focus is the ultimate secret to success in any business out there!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfDW7qAdFGk[/youtube]

Here’s M message Google is trying to pass from person to person! Do your part to pass the message.

Here are a few videos of what the members of the public have posted.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEPE-2KZESc[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwkyOI3cAOE[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PkqXrmdx9Q[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHydv-jZLfk[/youtube]
A message from Charles

I think the Internet is a place to stimulate creative marketing ideas. This M message not only leverages on people who are already a gmail user like myself who sees this link “Join our Gmail Video!” to spread the word creatively, it also leverages the power of video sharing marketing also!

Video sharing not only puts the original content from the actual author on every website that is interested in them, the traffic that gets to see these videos is going to be huge from website to website!

What a fantastic business idea of combining the power of viral marketing with a twist!

Online Dating Websites are quite a common thing to do by many people out there. There is quite a demand in it, and you could be the next millionaire if you handle this business well enough to get it to work. You could have started this dating business as usual like many started with an online dating site. In fact, there are so many free online dating scripts for us to use to install on our websites. But to market this dating website, it might take a lot of ideas and efforts to get it to work. I saw many people used Google Ads to market their dating website. I think it is pretty much straightforward and it is the next logical approach to use.

But to implement this by mail-ordering in the form of a Video Dating Tape, I think it is quite a novelty idea. Take a look at the video below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke6P5qF072k[/youtube]
*First of all, I must comment that this is a depressing video… Please don’t learn from it! Just learn the idea of video file marketing, that will do!*

Video File Marketing for Online Dating Websites

• Nowadays, it is so much easier to spread information with the aid of a video (the most powerful combination of video and audio with optional text as well). You can spread it through a low-cost VCD, or through video-sharing websites like YouTube or MetaCafe which is totally free. Of course, I have not counted the cost of creating the video yet…
• To create a video like this, you could actually talk a lot about a case scenario of a real life example like the one in the cartoon above. You could actually look for a female model and film a case scenario as a public education through the video file marketing. A girl is a better choice because it captures the attention of both guys and girls in terms of her attraction. Guys generally like to see pretty girls, while girls like to admire the beauty of girls as well!
• Spread the word out in the form of VCD or video-sharing (which will be covered in the next two paragraphs later).

Mail Ordering Method with Video File Marketing
Mail-Order Business has been a big business always. It is possible to do this business by yourself. One person by yourself is all it takes to start this business. People would love to receive a VCD as a gift! It is a real surprise, and with a little packaging to make it look better you could attract the person to watch the VCD contents! Probably include a personal sales letter to introduce your website and start telling people of your online dating service!

• You just have to stand in front of any particular neighbourhood, and start doing your calculation of the number of houses who still have people who are single. Just keep walking along the street and do your calculation and take down notes. Then you can start mailing out the VCDs to the houses you have taken note of on the next day.
• Or if you have too much money, simply bring down all your VCDs and start distributing from houses to houses…
• Or if you have too little money, you could start by sending the VCDs to all your friends telling them of the online dating service that you are starting. And if they know of anybody who might find it useful, they can send it to their friends. If not, just ask them to send it back to you so that you can resend it to another friend. Just keep doing it till everybody makes it a point to introduce the VCD to another friend like a trend! On your part, you have to keep giving VCDs to share the good news!

Internet Marketing Method with Video File Marketing
Using YouTube to do marketing for your videos might be an easier way but you have to be careful with the market segment you are focusing. Or if you are targeting the whole world (which is not so advisable since it is too large scale), you can just share this video out!

• It could be much easier to market this video since it is all situated on a video sharing server! Simply do an email marketing to let your friends see this video!
• Encourage them to embed the video onto their blogs and website, by putting really interesting things that they would want to put on their sites.

Conclusion
Well, it is just a business idea I just thought of while watching this depressing Video from YouTube… How unhappy the single guy and girl are in the video…