March 28, 2010 By

What Type of Software Do You Need?

electronics3In my bid to make a massive u-turn and transform my company into a world-class software powerhouse, I’m faced wit the difficult question: What type of software do people need?

So instead of taking wild guesses, let me ask you directly instead. What type of software do you need to:

  1. Make money online, for beginners?
  2. Search engine / getting more traffic?
  3. Automation software for managing a company?
  4. Blogging tools and systems?
  5. Ecommerce / affiliate marketing systems?

Tell me what’s on your mind. There is no right or wrong on this, just your opinion on what you need to make your life easier.

It works both ways of course – feel free to use any idea submitted here for your own products or in your business. After all, the more solutions we have, the better it is for you, the end user.

Filed Under: Ask Gobala Tagged With: , ,
March 18, 2010 By

Malaysia Shopping Cart Software – NiagaKit

I’ve always complained that Malaysian companies produce crappy looking software that is years behind what users can expect from US-based software companies. NiagaKit, a Malaysian shopping cart software however, is very different.
niagakit

Built ground up by Team Flarebiz, a group of young Internet marketers in Malaysia, NiagaKit has it all:

  • It is a complete shopping cart system for selling physical products online
  • It is very user friendly – you can get started without having to read a manual
  • The stores you can create actually look pretty good, with lots of themes
  • The salespage of the software is informative and attractive

Here’s how the admin interface looks like:

niagakit-admin

These guys have spent a lot of time developing and fine-tuning NiagaKit so that you (the user) benefits the most. In fact, if you plan to sell physical products online, NiagaKit is perhaps the best ecommerce solution available here in Malaysia.

The basic software costs RM999, and you can add on support, theme customization, and hosting if you want for additional cost.

At the moment though, NiagaKit seems to be missing the “Buy” button on their homepage. This is surprising as the “Buy” button is the most important button which should be placed everywhere.

I’m sure that will be fixed, meanwhile you can see the order page here: here

A demo is also available on the site so you can check out the features beforehand.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Malaysia Tagged With: , , ,
March 11, 2010 By

Cool YouTube Widget for Your WordPress Blog

After some unfortunate delays, I’ve released our free WordPress plugin called YouTube Monetizer. What does it do?

Well, lets analyze the two words..

  • YouTube – It displays related YouTube video thumbnails in your blog’s sidebar. You can customize your keywords to getter more relevant videos.
  • Monetizer – It helps you make more money by monetizing the full video display page. Add AdSense, banner ads or other advertising media.

YouTube Monetizer is very easy to install and works on any WordPress theme that supports widgets. Plus, you can customize the appearance with the custom CSS box.

This plugin works great for any type of blog, but it works especially well for “niche” content blogs, especially if you use Google AdSense on them.

Get more info here: YouTube Monetizer for WordPress

Yes, sometimes I do create useful thing that don’t cost you money :)

Filed Under: Google Adsense Tagged With: , ,
March 10, 2010 By

Browser Compatibility – When Will Internet Explorer Die?

While developing BlogSell I’ve come to understand the importance of cross-browser compatibility. I’ve switched to Firefox a long time ago and hardly ever use Internet Explorer, but the fact is there is still a large group of people using IE – which is installed by default in all Windows OS – and never quite made the leap to Firefox or Chrome or even Safari.

Fortunately, stats from analytics for a similar site in the blogging niche shows that Firefox users are now at  56.21%, while IE is only at 21.70%. Other browsers like Chrome (12.35%) and Safari are also significant, but IE still represents a big user group after Firefox.

It’s really no problem making your site or software compatible for Chrome and Safari – differences in appearance are minimal. But IE really sucks, and it varies so much from each version of IE, that it’s hard to believe it’s done by Microsoft.

Optimizing for IE is a lot of work.

browser-overall

browsers-firefox

browsers-ie

However, I think it’s better for us to stick to the 80/20 rule and optimize only for 80% of IE versions, which is version 8.xx and 7.xx. All other versions can take a hike. It’s easier to ask users to just upgrade their browser or download Firefox instead :)

Filed Under: Technology & Gadgets Tagged With: , , , , ,
March 3, 2010 By

BlogSell – My First Software Offer

blogsell

I’ve said before that I have a new direction for 2010, which will see me moving away from information marketing, and diving head first into software application development.

Now, I can announce the project I’ve been working on for the past 4 months – BlogSell.com

BlogSell is a blog monetization & management software that gives you the tools to make more money from your existing blogs. Currently, BlogSell allows you to:

  • Manage and track affiliate links
  • Manage and track affiliate banners
  • Sell links, banner ads, and paid reviews

And yes, it’s designed to work with WordPress blogs only for now, although integration with Blogger is a future possibility.

Since it is a hosted software (or hosted app), there is no script for you to upload and install to your own server. Everything is done centrally, but you can connect BlogSell to your own WordPress blogs using some simple plugins.

If you are a previous customer of my blogging products – WordPress Adsense System, Super Affiliate Blogger, Blog Paycheck or PLRWPVideos – then you will receive an invitation email by now to be one of the first to signup with for a ridiculously price.

For everyone else, we’ll officially open up registration once we’ve launched Version 1 at the end of March. For now, you can get more information and get access to the demo by going to www.BlogSell.com

Our first project took some time, and I learned a LOT of things in the process. All of which will help me designed even better software applications in the near future.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips Tagged With: , , , ,
March 2, 2010 By

My Last Google AdSense Check

Ok maybe not my absolute last, but definitely one of the last for this amount.

I’ve grown disenchanted with AdSense in recent times, and I think Google AdSense is a dying trend thanks in a big part to Google themselves. Google is now a billion dollar publicly listed corporation more interested in going after the big fish. They don’t need, or want, someone like me. Perhaps this feeling was in part to the way they brutally banned my AdWords account with no valid reason or explanation.

last-adsense

I’ve already sold off most of my AdSense sites and blogs, as a final “cash-out” strategy and the price was pretty good. You can earn about 10 to 15 times a site’s monthly AdSense income, which shows that a lot of people out there still want to hold on to Google AdSense for two simple reasons:

  • It is truly the most hands-free “residual income” method of making money online, even today
  • It’s still one of the easiest to master for newbies trying to make a buck or two online

For me though, since I’ve decided on my direction for 2010, AdSense seems to be a bad fit. At my stage right now I know that whatever effort I can put into building an AdSense site I can apply to creating software or information products that will generate a much better income, with much better satisfaction.

Of course AdSense will still be used on test concept sites etc, but for the most part, I’m done with AdSense.

Filed Under: Google Adsense Tagged With: