That’s to say that I have to make my blogs better than ever.  I have to do a better job at work.  I have to keep myself abreast in the Internet arena since this is my career.

I must say that all my ex-partners from 2004 onwards have given me the best presents ever.  That’s “experience”.  I have learned something important about being positive in life.  I have learned something about focusing on getting better and better.  I have learned something about my wants and needs.

I am seeing more and more people focusing professionally in their online business.  People such as Dan Schawbel whom I have met in midst of 2007.  He is getting his blog up to speed right now as well. Carl Ocab is also another good friend who has been working really hard online.  Been hearing him juggling between business and study.  That’s really very taxing for a 15 year old boy.  Yaro Starak is planning to focus on his blog in 2009 more than ever since he has been on travelling from places to places in 2008, making his time unsuitable to blog as frequent as he should.

Ok, it’s getting late. I am going to take my rest now.  Take care my friends!

How I got myself to become an Internet Reviewer

I remember when I first started this blog as an Internet reviewer in June 2007. It was right after I resigned my directorship with a delivery company in Singapore in May 2007. My background has always been related to Internet in one way or another.

I could still remember June 2006 when I worked out a short term food delivery project known as “Soccer Food”.  It was a short project which I got help from a few friends.  And we managed to get ourselves interviewed in the various newspapers in Singapore.  I could still remember my article was situated side-by-side with McDonald’s when they first started their McDelivery.  At that time, if I am not wrong, Old Chang Kee also started their food delivery too.  I got my website search engine optimized organically with the keyword “food delivery” where I got lots of traffic.  (By the way, my blog here is quite optimized for the word “internet reviewer” as well.)

6 months just before I left the company, I was experiementing with landing page optimization to bring in the maximum result for the delivery company.  I did a couple of tests on the website and tried writing my very first sales copy.  It was fun when I start seeing big companies opting into our mailing list.  We got quite a couple of phone calls asking for our delivery service.  I went for a few internet marketing courses, and that has really got me into thinking expanding my career into this industry.  And officially, I had left the company in May 2007.

Between May and June 2007, I had been thinking what I can provide to the world on the Internet.  I have certificates in Enterprise Development from International Professional Managers Association, Information Technology (computer studies) from Ngee Ann Polytechnic.  I also had been exposed to various kinds of sales in web design, real estate, health, events, and delivery industries.  Until I found John Chow’s make-money-online blog, that’s how I decided and started writing reviews about the websites.

Life as an Internet Reviewer

I studied all the various kinds of reviews done by different bloggers.  I read books on landing page optimizations.  I even tried to work on my own websites.  I started doing video reviews when Carl noticed me.  I must admit that my video reviews are not very up to standard when I finally got myself into John Cow’s blog.  That’s only because my accent is very Singaporean and my UK friends may not be able to understand what I am “mumbling” about in the reviews.  That doesn’t stop me as I continue to write video reviews.  Typically, one video review can take me almost the whole day!  Just imagine having to talk the same thing again and again because of “no-good” video areas in reviewing websites.  Of course, I got myself better each time and I got it faster and faster.

As I move into the end of 2007 that time, my girlfriend started to complain about my income.  That’s because I am only beginning to make money online.  Money was not good enough for her to see us getting married in the future (which we are getting married this month!).  I started to take up a sales job in the IT industry and worked part time in reviewing websites.  Definitely, my focus started to deteriorate in writing reviews, making my clients unhappy about it.  But I wasn’t really happy because I am not learning what I wanted to learn.  I quitted my job immediately after three months in March 2008.  That’s where I am going strong in my reviews and keeping my clients happy once again.

As I work longer as an Internet reviewer, I found that I need a breakthrough.  I have done up a couple of websites and they are all maturing and making some money for me.  At the same time, I can hear my girlfriend nagging again because she wants to see me with a job security.  She started to ignore me for one week.  With my faith in God, I decided to look for a job which can assist me in growing up along the Internet marketing industry.

Truly amazing, God has answered my prayer and I found an internet marketing job with a MNC.  I dedicated myself 100% in the company as I can see a huge potential learning opportunity for me.  I worked regionally serving for many country websites.  And although I have not touched my websites as much as I do in the past, I start to see paychecks coming in as well.

Preparing for the future

As you may know, I am going to get married in 20 Jan 2009.  Remembering that I have no visibility of my future in 2007, while I was working on my internet reviews, I spent a lot of time tidying my room.  I could still remember throwing a lot of things away.  I never knew this was for the preparation for my marriage in 2009 actually because I cannot imagine so many things to be done in 2008 when I am so held up by my job and my websites.  It was truly God’s blessings because I am starting to see a future of what I have been dreaming for.  It’s all becoming real in a blink of an eye.  I have planned to work for the MNC for five years because I can see so much potential for this company to grow in the Internet arena.  And I want to see how it can grow into that stage!

Nevertheless, I am also spending the time to work on my reviews because it is now already a hobby for me to play with.  I would love to review websites and to see how much potential a website can become.  Problogger has a post on “How to write fast” and that really inspired me.  It can be about writing fast and making things to work correctly.  It’s not about how much time I need to spend on blogging.  It’s all about Key Performance Index (KPI)!  And I must admit that the KPI for my blog is deteriorating in 2008… I am going to change that in 2009!

On the very first day of 2009, I wish all of my blog readers a very happy new year!

Just wish to show my appreciation to all of your blessings:

Azmi Jahan: He’s Sunny I met at desinotes.com.  A real sincere guy I have met so far in blogosphere who was willing to sell his money-making blog at a very low price just because he wished to concentrate in his studies.  I have not regretted to have met him when I first started my own blog here.  Thanks for being my blog friend!

He was asking me what my ethnicity and religion is.  Ok, I am Chinese, and my dialect is Teochew.  My family religion is Taoism (sometimes mixed with Buddhism too). but I have converted to Christian quite a few years ago.

My marriage will be following my family religion due to filial piety, and also because my wife-to-be is a Buddhist.

Requested from Sunny, I will try to work out something on my blog, my flickr, my twitter, my YouTube and my qik to show all of you how weddings are held in Singapore.

Used Trucks: I have not met this person before.  But he has contributed a fair bit of comments in my blog.  Thanks so much!  Most noticeably, thanks for giving me your blessings.

@MikeChoy: Another guy I have just met on Twitter who gave me his blessings.  According to his profile, he’s an expert in nutrition and weight loss from Kuala Lumpur  Thanks so much for your blessings!

@markdavidson: This guy is awesome!  I can always find him to chat on twitter whenever we bump on each other!  I think his free Twitter secrets has gotten him more than 5900 followers!  Thanks so much for your blessings!

My wedding preparation

There are a lot to prepare!  I am tidying up my room to welcome a new person.  My room will now accomodate two persons’ things!  Because of that, I have to sacrifice one bookshelf!  I have two with me.

This is one bookcase I have just cleared.  See that cable in between?  That’s my laptop cable.  Please ignore that! :)  This bookcase will be thrown out!

Oh no! Where should I keep the books on the floor?

This is my 2nd bookshelf which I have packed with my books.  I am STILL CONSIDERING whether I should throw away this bookshelf also or not.

Next, I had also printed 150 pieces of wedding cards.  I have always wanted to print directly on the cards when people kept telling me that it is impossible.  Here it is!

This is the front cover.

This is the invitation message which is printed directly on the card!

Next, last Saturday, I have also ordered 42 boxes of wedding cakes to be given with the wedding cards.  I ordered online from www.kyo.com.sg.  They have quite a good range of traditional cakes.  But the funny thing is that their online ordering system don’t work for me!  After ordering, there’s no fulfillment.  I guess Singapore is still trying to do online business.  It’s a good initiative!  Anyway, I called to fulfill my order and found my order to be lost!  Ok, I guess this phone call I have made should do a better job.  The person has lost my number after my order!  In the end, I went down to the shop directly just in case.  And the hilarious part is that the shop doesn’t know about my order!  Anyway, today she called back and told me that she found my number and called me to check if I have ordered anything from her!  hahaha! Good try!  But I believe they can do better next time…

I have bought a wardrobe from Ikea, and was quite astonished by the fact that the removal of old Ikea wardrobe was not free when I saw them stating that the first 2 Ikea furniture are free.  At Ikea, they did told me that it’s free but the delivery man at my house told me that there are fine prints that I have to take note of.  In the end, I paid over $40 to ask them to help me throw away.  My sis feedbacked this to Ikea and we are compensated with free Ikea meal.  I felt really good about it!

Now, I am going to settle my queen-size bed with my wife-to-be.  I tell you, I must get my own table and probably try to retain my bookshelves!

Status of internet review

I am now working on a new internet branding of myself as an internet reviewer.  I have done up a new website with the help of my web designer.  It has a pretty clean look.  And I will want to focus on my internet reviews over at that page and blog more about my thoughts about business, life, marketing and such.  Stay tuned!  But wait till my wedding is over.  It’s just the beginning.

Happy new year to all of you!

Thanks for reading this blog post.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I am blogging about it.  Keep posting your blessings to me in this blog.  I will announce my next wedding update till then!  Happy new year!

If you’ve noticed, i’ve been a little irregular in my blog posting.

First of all, i would like to announce that i’m getting married next month! i’ve been busy with my internet marketing job, my wedding preparation and keeping myself fit. Nevertheless, my websites are still working hard for me.

My web designer may be quite angry with me because he’s the one chasing after me instead of the other way round.

My company has got a major project for me to take care of. It’s also very crucial period because here. I really love working on websites. I’ve been learning a lot about the different user interfaces.

Nevertheless, i found twitter to be an ideal platform for me to talk in 140 characters. Been checking on google reader on my phone whenever i’m on the public transport. Used WirelessIRC+Twitter on my mobile phone. Checking on my favorite people i’m following.

My favorite blogger, sunny, has commented “Where is charles”.

No WORRIES, everybody! I’ll still keep on blogging as much as i can!

My marriage is on 20 Jan 2009. Congrats me! I’ll count all the comments and put them in a post with a link to your side. Deadline will be determined by me till i post my wedding blessing.

I remember in the past where we are all sending emails asking for link exchange.  That was the most primitive way of bringing in relevant traffic since we are asking for link exchange from relevant industries.  After all, our predecessors know that we are all doing a joint-venture here.

Today, it’s more about your creativity and your hard work to bring in as much traffic as you can ever think.  Today, I am going to identify some of the traffic which you can think about it and apply on your website.

1. Linking from your twitter posts

This is as simple as posting a link from your twitter account.  Twitter today is being crawled very often by search crawlers.  That’s because they always have a lot of meaty stuff for Google to see and to find out.  Twitter itself is also crowded with a lot of people writing and reading messages.  You are very likely to get some traffic here whenever you have something interesting for your followers.

2. Linking from your Squidoo page

Have you created enough squidoo pages for yourself?  Well, that is also one of the crucial things to do today.  Squidoo is considered to be one of the most important article websites on earth.  My favorite marketer, Seth Godin, is the one running this website and I can see how much it has been evolving over the years.  Write a good squidoo page, and bring that target traffic down into your funnel of web pages today!

3. Linking from your Facebook

You get to see a lot of people sharing links on Facebook.  Facebook has become a place where we get to see real people online.  We will get to see comments, links, information all around the Facebook.  Every facebook profile represents a certain interest that they belong to very clearly.  And people get to befriend you probably because they are interested in you or your Facebook group you have created.

4. Linking from your YouTube account

YouTube is another traffic not to be missed.  Video is the way to go for people who don’t like to see too much text.  But if they got interested in you because of the video you have made, they have no choice but to see what your website has to offer.  It’s a big treasure inside not to be missed!

5. Linking from forums of your niche

Have you been actively involved in forums?  You will want to present youself as an expert or a beginner.  Whichever you are, we all want to make friends with people who are of the same niche.  Making more friends may lead to potential links out there which we will never know.  This is all about giving what you know.  Don’t keep on thinking of what you can get from the website.  Sometimes, it is also all about giving too.  Most forums should be allowing you to share your links in certain topics.

6. Linking from your Social Bookmarking account

Nowadays, social bookmarking websites such as Digg has allowed us to put in our websites.  By constantly bookmarking things that are of interest, you will get to see more people interested in you because they are interested in what you read, and even what you write.  Show them your profile!

7. Linking from your Blog!

Your own blog is the great tool to generate a conversation between websites.  It arouses people to be interested in what you are doing, especially when they are interested to learn from you.  It becomes a good learning ground for you to practise too.  Blogging and commenting on other blogs are two important things from a blogger to arouse interest here.

I hope you guys like what I have wrote here.  If you do like, you may want to subscribe to my feed to keep in touch with me of what I want to say here.

Ok guys, it’s 12.56am now.  I gonna sleep now.  Have a great holiday ahead! Merry christmas to all of you in advance!

To my biggest surprise, it seems to me that these corporate citizens are not just not “there” yet in terms of their experience in marketing online. They don’t really get the feel of making money online by marketing products and services online. Well, anyway their business model is still revolving around the traditional way of marketing. Which means they are doing strategic partnership with their suppliers, they also make their money from the leads generation through all sorts of media. This is definitely not surprising to me that they have to do it this way. That’s because Asia is still not really ready for the internet business as a whole yet. The consumers may be increasing a little because of the cheaper access with their mobile phone and mobile internet.

In the very true internet marketing world, all of us are very likely working in a one-man business. So much so that it is making me feel more and more anti-social because i don’t feel the pressure to know more people when i get to attend any business networking sessions. In fact, i’ve attended countless of them in the past for my past businesses.

For the ones who are more ambitious online, they will have to set up an office to employ talents to start and to maintain the money-making websites. People like myself, i’m sick of setting up my own office already. I would rather outsource wherever i can, keeping myself as portable as i can to my mobile phone as my key to the internet businesses. But of course, when i have to write reviews, it may not work with my Nokia N95. My laptop has to come into play.

As the economy is getting into uncertainty, we get to hear more and more companies retrenching employees. But we cannot stop marketing activities.. Or else it may be disastrous. It turned out that internet marketing is the wise choice.. But do remember that asia as a whole is not as savvy online as countries like philippines, singapore, india and even hong kong. You can be surprised that malaysia may not be ready because of their limited broadband access. Indonesia is also another. Thailand may still be quite ok. Vietnam is rising for sure too.

You may get to see most of the audience could be from the new generation which maybe younger that age 30. Not all companies can target that young age group for sure. Some companies should be enjoying great cash flow from the free flow of traffic from the search engine.. Paying for every click is also a good testing platform to see how many people are using google search engine.

In terms of products, it may not be suitable for now because delivery is both redundant and costly. People may want to buy but they cannot have instant gratitude of receiving the product. And that can be costly to deliver. It can be redundant because shops are quite accessible and we can handcarry ourselves…

In my opinion, services and digital products are the most feasible business to do online. People can get instant gratification. It’s easy to render our service upon payment.

Many internet marketeers tend to do joint ventures. That’s the way they can almost instantly make a fortune out of it. That’s how it made them survive through the internet empire. Do you do joint ventures? The internet is actually a place of collaboration. It’s not about competing over each other’s products. In fact, your competitors are your best complimentary marketing partners you can leverage on!

Joint venture will almost never happen between competitors. That’s because the traditional media has made them that way. They like to talk about market share.. While the people in internet talk about sharing the market! At least, it won’t happen for now in my very understanding.

The moment an MNC starts to joint venture with another competitive MNC, i believe we will start to see a whole new chapter about marketing which the internet has been trying to foster.

That’s also the very reason that we’ll almost never see them going to succeed in internet.

Marketing on the internet is a lifelong choice. We should not see a web community being built just because the company is holding a temporary campaign. This database is the key to market without having to spend more money, trying to look for them again. In fact, we should think of search engine as a complimentary to bring our marketing to the next level.

The moment we see more traffic coming from the search engine, we’ll see our success is drawing very near.

Why spend too much money on another media such as tv and radio when you can focus on the same media, i.e internet?

Just think about it..

First of all, it does look nice to have a larger screen. But it’s as good as buying cheaper phones. Probably because only smart phones have pretty figures! Haha.. That’s too bad..

Talking about large screens.. Nowadays, most mobile phones have become smarter. They have evolved and yet becoming affordable. But still, there are people who only want to call and sms and larger screen is a big advantage for elderly folks.

Next, i’m going to talk about the scaleability of the phone. Today’s phone works almost just the same as a computer! We can install all sorts of applications and they actually bring the phone to the next stage! All with just an ordinary looking phone. For example, i’m currently using WaveLog to blog this post with my N95 while i’m on my way home.

Do you really use the smart phone like i do? I can do my word documents, read contracts, and even prepare powerpoint with my phone. I may sometimes set my phone as a web server for someone to access my files that he or she needs. I don’t even need a computer with me.

I have 8Gb memory card with me to stall all my stuff. It’s still sufficient for now unless i start to put in movie files and play with Divx player.

And if you don’t subscribe to mobile broadband for your internet access, it’s also limiting your phone ability.. Your phone can act as a wireless router using joikuspot premium so that your computers can access the internet!

Ok, my last warning to you. Don’t buy N95 if you don’t have a battery backup plan! I virtually can use up my battery within 3 hours.. As such, i have to connect to power adapter whenever i can so that i won’t miss my phone too much.. By the way, the usb power adapter which you can charge your mobile phone from a computer is not very efficient. I bought this nokia brand of usb power adapter.. And my phone can actually drain faster than the power can charge!

All the best to you! I’ve reached home now.. See ya!

Here’s the information of tracking me on my way home from my girlfriend’s house.  GPSed link

I was trying it out for fun to see how it can track and update my twitter followers.  So, I started my WirelessIRC program (It is not just an IRC program, it also has twitter ability.  We’ll talk about that probably next time.).  And I tried to see what my GPSed program is trying to update on my twitter account.  So this is one of the twitter message it has updated.  I tried to tell my Twitter followers what this is first because I don’t want this GPSed program to send unwanted messages unnecessarily. :)  Hence, I posted this message.

I realize that this program is always showing the same URL to the followers.  Hence, it doesn’t really need to post every 1 minute.  Probably every 5 to 10 minutes is good enough since the journey takes about half an hour.  3 to 6 updates is probably good enough to tell everybody where I am.

And by the way, a very good Sunday morning to all of you!

I don’t use my mobile phone like most Singaporeans. By the way, my blog visitors are mostly from United States. Most of the Singaporeans use their phone only for 3 things: call, sms and take photo if they can. My phone is a little different from the rest. Or i should say it’s totally different. I can use my phone the whole day and i’m not talking on the phone or doing any sms.

I was meeting my girlfriend today. I thought of visiting nokia website to look for the wrist band accessory for my mobile phone. So i used Opera Mini and started surfing the web. Nokia asked for survey. And i don’t mind doing that while i was shopping at Ikea Tampines for furniture.

In that survey, i found myself favor only two phones. That’s my Nokia N-series and Apple iPhone. In fact, i’m thinking of Google Phone too but i didn’t find that option. And by the way, i think blackberry should be out of trend amongst the business people. I just find the email function is so plain..

And between them, i still choose my N95 as my preferred choice. That’s because it has become part of my life now.

What i can do with my phone? I can do mind-mapping with Projekt program, database management with QuodDB, checking my mails with Profimail, working on my word, excel or powerpoint documents with Quickoffice, read ebooks with Adobe Acrobat reader, setting wireless router for my laptop to access internet with Joikuspot Premium, setting up web server for anybody who needs to access certain info from my phone, blogging right now with wavelog, surfing internet with Opera Mini, do live video with Qik, communicate with Skype, Msn, twitter, irc, downloading YouTube videos to watch with Mobitubia, share files with SymSMB (But too bad this company Telexy no longer works on it since the programmers are actually working for Nokia too.), podcast, internet radio, share my files in Flickr, ftp to my servers, and i have lots of phone call managers, sms managers, handling my appointment dates in my Handy Calendar, biblereader is also available for me to read the words of wisdom, and some map programs to play with.

As you can see, there are way too many things for my N95 to do. And by the way, i’ve updated my phone software to V30.0.015.

Ever since i’ve got myself an internet marketing job to bring in more income to start a family with my wife-to-be (by the way, we’re getting married this Jan 2009), i’ve been busy juggling my blogs and my work. Checking emails for any review work, working on some info websites, and preparing for the wedding. My web designer and review clients must be very tolerant of me to get back to them. Thank you so much!

The nokia survey basically shows me that i have almost all the software that they think i use. And i have even more than just that. Thanks to Handango who is showing so many great software in front of me. I must have become their premium customer by now.