November 30, 2008 By

Pictures from The MindValley / SMART Event

I’m probably the last person to upload pictures from the SMART Seminar / Mind Valley dinner and hang-out session earlier this month. Thanks to Vishen for organizing such a great event, which is a great break from the otherwise boring life of an Internet marketer :)

Granted not all the pictures are here but can see more from all these Facebook profiles.

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This is a picture of me and Alexandra Cattoni from MindValley. In case you’re wondering, yes Mind Valley is filled with beautiful talented people. It’s not fair I know but life’s never fair. If only I knew about Mind Valley when I decided to quit my job in TM three years ago.

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That’s me, Ewen Chia, Vince Tan and Edmund Loh.

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With Anik Singhal and Ewen Chia, two of the world’s top super affiliates. I never got the chance to speak to Ewen much before. But during this event I realized he’s a really nice down-to-earth guy and I suspect that’s because he had to work really hard to get to where he is now.

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On the right are Brian Wong and Vishen Lakhiani, the co-founder of Mind Valley. Their blog is a must-read too if you’re serious about Internet marketing. Brian Wong is a NuSkin Diamond and he’s pretty successful in the MLM and personal development market, plus he drives a Lotus Elise.

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And a picture of (almost) everyone including Patric Chan and wife Emily, Mark Joyner, Simon Leung.

I hope Vishen and Mind Valley will organize more events like this – and I hope I get invited too :)

Filed Under: News and Updates Tagged With: , , ,
November 30, 2008 By

1WayLinks SEO Tool – Backlinks and Blog Content

1WayLinks is a new blog SEO tool introduced by Jonathan Leger and it is the perfect blogging resource to complement his already popular 3WayLinks seo tool.

How 1WayLinks work:

  • You sign-up for a monthly account, and add as many blogs you want included in the network
  • Your blog then gets free content from 1WayLink, each post has 3 links in the to other blogs in the network
  • You post your own article with 3 links to ANY of your sites, and it gets published too, giving you hundred of one-way links from different C-Class IP addresses

You’re limited to 200 syndicated posts a month, but by adding another blog you can increase that limit by 50 posts. So if you add four new blogs into 1WayLink in return you can have your post published to 400 different blogs, giving up to 1,200 links back to any site – which included WordPress blogs, Blogger blogs, HTML sites or even YouTube video URLs.

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What About Duplicate Content?

Unlike traditional blog syndication systems or article marketing services, with 1WayLinks you can “spin” your article content by creating variations of sentences, synonyms, and different anchor texts. That way, every article published by the system is at least 30% unique.

However, unlike Article Marketing Automation you cannot determine the uniqueness level of each article, plus you cannot manually approve or reject articles. So you have no control over duplicate content as it’s all published automatically to your blog.

For the person writing the blog post however, there is an incentive to make it unique. If they want all their backlinks to count they must make Google see that each article is unique enough to be indexed and ranked. So they will, if they know what they are doing, spin the article using the built-in text editor before submitting it for review.

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So Does 1WayLinks Work?

Although I am only blogging about it now that 1WayLinks is officially launched, I was part of the beta-testing group and have been using it for more than 2 moths now. I’ve published to posts to about 400 different sites within that time and most of the keywords I’ve targeted are already in the first page Google results.

So does 1WayLinks help improve your SEO? You bet it does, but here’s my advice:

  • Target the correct keywords – go for more specific or long tail keywords and it will be easier to rank.
  • Spin your keywords / anchor text – don’t just spin your article content; spin the URLs and anchor texts too
  • Control amount of posts – if your site is new, publish to about 100+ blogs only so the increase of back links look natural
  • Link to many pages / sites – in one article you can have up to 3 hyperlinks, but don’t make all hyperlinks lead to the same site

1WayLinks is a great tool for niche bloggers who manage more than a handful of blogs or websites. It facilitates the process of getting links from other blogs, and also adds some relatively good content to your blog.

Get more info here: 1WayLinks Blog SEO Tool

Please also take this poll:
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Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , ,
November 21, 2008 By

GMail Themes in New GMail Version

Whoo..

I logged into Gmail to day and found that they have a new version, with added themes! Cool.

Now you can customize Gmail to match your personality with over 30 themes to choose from. Themes range from simple color-only variations to some pretty funky and even weird ones (see below)

In some cases, you can also customize by location. Some themes change during the day, and we use the location information you provide to correctly time these changes with your local sunrise, sunset, and/or weather. If you select one of these themes, you’ll see a Country/Region drop-down menu appear. Select the country you want, and then enter a city in the field provided. If you don’t enter a city, or enter an invalid one, we’ll set your location to the capital city of the country you selected.

I finally settled for the “Graffiti” theme below. It’s supposed to change colors according to the time of day, so I’ll just see what happens for now. If you don’t already have the themes feature in your Gmail please wait and you’ll get it soon enough.

gmail-theme

Filed Under: Email Marketing Tagged With: ,
November 18, 2008 By

Awesome Singapore Night Safari and Zoo

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I went to Singapore last weekend partly for the SMART Seminar (although I made an appearance for only a few hours) and to take a short break from my business activities. We we there for three days but unfortunately could not go to as many places as I had hoped. Maybe another trip there soon?

One place I’ve always wanted to go was the Singapore Night Safari – heck this has been 10 years coming! Although me and Sheila don’t think it was as good as the Bogor Safari in Indonesia, it was still interesting enough to keep me interested. I have a short attention span, mind you..

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures with Flash, and that meant it wasn’t worth taking any pictures of the animals at all since all you’ll see is darkness. I did however manage to get some “fish therapy” at the exit of the Night Safari and that was really interesting.

fish theraphy

I’ve seen a lot of “fish theraphy” outlets spring up in Malaysia over the past year but never tried it. The moment you put your feet in the water the fish immediately start to nibble away.

Did you know that a Malaysian zoo worker jumped into the white tigers enclosure and died the same day we were there? I didn’t know about it too till I read the news the following day. It’s a pretty freaky story of how someone could just lose their mind and decide to take their own life in the most unusual way!

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,
November 11, 2008 By

Outsource Your Blogging to The Philippines

imageA lot things you do for your blog is nothing but a waste of your time. Some of these things, while necessary, certainly does not generate more income for you. The solution: outsource!

While you can outsource to just about anyone, the trend today is to outsource to the Philippines. Why the Philippines and not India or some other country?

According to Replace Yourself, an outsourcing guide by John Jonas, here’s why:

  1. Philippinos speak and write good English, are are easy to instruct
  2. It’s relatively cheaper to outsource to Philippines compared to most other English-speaking countries
  3. They value foreign employers and are happy to work for a Caucasian boss

I think the selling point is that it’s easy to tell them what you want and with a little training, get them up to speed with your working style and work rate. Plus, communication is key and generally speaking it’s easier to understand Philippinos than a lot of other people.

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John Jonas, the anti-guru, set-up Replace Myself to help marketers and bloggers outsource their work to the Philippines. Starting on Day 1 of your subscription, you’ll receive:

  1. Private Vault Videos: Detailed videos giving you the inside track on exactly how John’s company trains overseas workers to be the best marketers possible
  1. Effective Training Tools: Exclusive access to the actual training tools we use to create our elite assistants
  1. How to Hire Guidebook: A step-by-step audio guidebook that shows you how to quickly hire your own outsourced employee

Even if you think you never ever want anyone to touch the content part of your blog, there’s still a whole lot of stuff you can outsource, such as:

  • Researching topics and compiling a list of sites
  • Installing WordPress, themes and plugins
  • Keyword research and compilation
  • Leaving related comments of other blogs
  • Social bookmarking and blog submissions
  • Search Engine Optimization or SEO

If you can show someone else exactly how it’s done, you can outsource it. John’s idea is to “replace” yourself as soon as possible, and working not more than 17 hours a week on your online business.

Recommended: Get 14-day trial to Replace Myself

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , , , ,
November 9, 2008 By

Start-Up Camp Malaysia

image Start-Up Camp Malaysia is an interesting event you could attend if you want to know more about how to engineer your own start-up company.

According to the website:

Startup Camp, a.k.a “The Unconference for the Startup Community”, is an unconference-style event that’s dedicated to bringing together the various members of the startup community for a face-to-face collaborative meetup where its the attendees that drive the agenda (in true unconference fashion).

Start-Up Camp is organized by my friend Daniel Lim and the same team that brought you BarCamp Malaysia. If you liked BarCap you will probably like this event as well. Go here to register for Start-Up Camp.

Filed Under: Seminars & Events, Technology & Gadgets Tagged With: ,
November 9, 2008 By

Global Entrepreneurship Week Malaysia

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Global Entrepreneurship Week Malaysia happens from November 17-23. This event covers a lot of talks on entrepreneurship in Malaysia, although through the badly organized event listing description I find it difficult to understand exactly what they are and how you may benefit from them.

Besides it seems more targeted towards CEOs and multinational companies, but there are some interesting stuff that you may enjoy as a small business owner too. If you want to learn more about entrepreneurship do check out their event listings.

Below is a video of the event.

Filed Under: Seminars & Events Tagged With: ,
November 9, 2008 By

TrueWealth Day Event Pictures

TrueWealth Day presented a great oportunity for me to meet up with local authors as well as Mr Azizi Ali, my publisher and well-respected expert on personal finance here in Malaysia. Here are some pictures, noted that I didn’t take quite as many as I should have :)

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Picture of us having lunch with Mr Azizi Ali.

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I never knew True Wealth had published so many books by local authors until I saw an entire smorgasbord of book titles laid out on the table.

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Yeap, that many books!

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And a picture of me with Kidino and Zamri Nanyan, two Internet marketers much more experienced in the field of Internet marketing that I am :)

I first knew Zamri from his MLM Lessons site and for a while I was giving away his free rebrandable e-book. I think that was way back in 2003/04.

Filed Under: Seminars & Events Tagged With: , , ,
November 5, 2008 By

Meet Local Malaysian Authors – True Wealth Day

image If you’ve ever wanted to meet a lot of Malaysian authors all in one place, here’s your chance.

True Wealth is holding it’s first Open Day on 8th November 2008, and by attending it you get to purchase all True Wealth publications at a discount, both books by Azizi Ali and all Truewealth Authors. Besides that you also get to listen to featured speakers giving valuable presentations on their favorite topics.

I will be there on to give a 30-minute talk titled “Turn Your Knowledge Into a Product”, where I share how anyone can turn their skills or knowledge into digital products that they can sell online for big profits. I will also be autographing books by participants.

True Wealth’s office is in Kelana Jaya (behind Giant, opposite Kelana Square). Please refer to their website for details on the event.

Filed Under: Malaysia Boleh, Seminars & Events Tagged With: , , ,
November 1, 2008 By

Going Aboard The Singapore Flyer

Singapore Flyer

A view of Singapore city at night from the Singapore Flyer, supposedly the largest wheel in the world. This was one of the places I visited when I went to Singapore recently and although it did not meet my expectations, the ride was still quite interesting.

Singapore Flyer

The full view of the Singapore flyer, taken on our “Duck Tour” the next day.

Singapore Flyer

Here’s the full view of the Singapore Flyer Pretty intimidating huh?

You could go onboard the Flyer in the morning to have a clear day view of the city, or you could go during sunset to catch a romantic glimpse of the sun setting amid the skyscrapers. You could also go at night, like I did, to see the lion city fully lit.

Filed Under: News and Updates Tagged With: ,