May 12, 2011 By

American Idol 2011 Winner – Google Prediction!

Who will win American Idol 2011? I think I have the answer to that thanks to my good friend and hated enemy Google.

Looking at Google Trends, and comparing between past 3 months vs past 30 days, I think I have foreseen the future. At the time of writing the top 3 have not been announced so I think it’s fair to say that if I’m right, I did not cheat.

To add in a wild card, I included Casey Abrams, the talented but unpredictably unpredictable idol. Although he’s out it’s interesting to see his trends alongside the rest.

American Idol 2011 Winner

For the past 5 months the early favorite was Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery. Then Casey Abrams and James Durbin started to gain popularity. Casey Abrams was the most popular idol at one time, but he’s probably too unpredictable for people to waste their votes on.

Although as you can see, he’s still being search a lot. Even at yesterday’s Idol the camera was constantly on him when it wasn’t on the Top 4.

James Durbin has been rising steadily in popularity, which is quite expected since he has the strongest voice among all. But the person I like, and the one I think will eventually win American Idol, is poised to overtake him in terms of Google searches.

Let see how this looks like in the past 30 days, excluding searches from the past 24 hours which would have resulted from today’s Idol:

American Idol 2011 Winner

You can see a clear spike in searches after each Idol show. Tomorrow you will probably see another spike after today’s Idol but I don’t have to see it to make my prediction. Haley Reinhart got searched a lot after her awesome version of House of The Rising Sun last week. I blew me away and I think she’s got the best, most unique voice among all the Top 4.

The next few weeks can see a lot of changes, but I’ll be extremely busy (with a secret project) so I’ll just go ahead and made my prediction right now.

Here it is:

#4 – Lauren Alaina

#3 – Scotty McCreery

#2 – James Durbin

#1 – Haley Reinhart

Yup, that’s what i say. Haley Reinhart is peaking at the right moment while everyone else is plateauing or just getting boring.

Lauren Alaina will be forgotten by before the next American Idol. Scotty is just getting tons of votes from teenage girls who dig him for his sports fame and his good looks but ultimately, there just isn’t enough of them after you take away Justin Bieber’s share. James Durbin is a slightly lesser version of Adam Lambert.

Haley on the other hand has received much lesser publicity than everyone else, and is still looking good for the top 3. That’s why I think she will win this.

How can you argue with talent like this:

Filed Under: Ask Gobala
April 29, 2010 By

Do You Hate Product Launches?

How many of you reading this right now were around before product launches became accepted as a standard marketing tactic?

Not too long ago, an Internet marketer created a really good product worth talking about. Then he approached a selected few of his trusted friends to help him promote as an affiliate.

It caught on, people talked about it, and some of the better ones truly changed people’s lives.

They did not care about making $1,000,000 in 7 seconds, or whatever.

A slow and steady increase in sales actually helped them cope. They cared about support and giving customized, personal assistance to each customer. They cared about their product.

Fast forward a little ..

You’re now in the product launch era.

It started somewhere around 2005 with Jeff Walker’s classic “Product Launch Formula” mega-launch. It was an awesome product. It changed everything, and everyone.

Then Mike Filsaime did it. John Reese did it. Michael Cheney did it. All the guys that licked scraps out of these guys’ bowls did it to. It was rinsed and repeated.

The problem with truly great ideas is that they are always duplicated and mass produced till they become.. well..  lame.

File:Ford assembly line - 1913.jpgToday everything is about the process of launching a product, and almost nothing about the product itself. It’s like the Henry Ford version of Internet marketing.

Mass production and sales. Structured, rigid “assembly lines” that churn out a new product every few months.

Customer individuality is replaced by a one-size for all mentality.

Out source the creation of the product. Hire a ghost-writer. 

OTOs. Conversion. Back-end sales. Forced continuity. Limited quantity. Limited time.

Now anyone can launch a product, regardless of age, authority or any real passion for the subject matter. In my earlier post I commented about the big problem with information products, which only serves to compound the problem of product launch “overkill”.

However, I have to admit that product launches work like magic. Or at least they used to.

I raised over $65,000 in 7 days in 2007 with my partners Melvin Ng and Vince Tan, which bought us air tickets to US and a whole lot more. In 2009 when we launched Rahsia ClickBank, I made more than RM200,000 in 30 days with Zamri Nanyan.

Product launches work.

But I strongly believe that they work much, much better when the product that is being “launched” is worth being talked about in the first place.

You can take a pile of shit, wrap it up, invite a few big names to hype it up as “magic shit”, and you can make some quick cash. It’s been done before. It’s still being done.

But it’s not what I like to do.

The problem is, I find more and more Internet marketers in love with the process – inviting JV partners, creating an affiliate contest, sending out hyped-up “affiliate leaderboard” emails, etc.

When they want to recruit you, they tell you how much money you are going to make, who are the top dog hungry to promote for them, and what great Apple products you can win. They tell you how well their product is converting, and how deliriously happy their customers are.

Most of these guys are lying through their teeth.

Affiliates hardly take the time to read or review a product before recommending it to their lists. All they want to do is get on the Top 10 list so they can brag about it till the end of days.

That’s why after a while, I gave up on most product launches. I only participate in launches by people I know and have grown to trust.

After reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow (as lame as some people may think it is), I’ve come to a conclusion:

Product launches will soon be part of the “noise” that everyone ignores. In order for me to stand out and survive, I need to focus on creating products that are better than everyone else’s offer. It may mean I will have to spend an incredible amount of time researching and designing products, but in the end it will be worth it.

Well, that’s MY conclusion anyway. What do you think of product launches?

Does it really help you, as a customer, to get caught up in the hype and high-pressure sales tactics in product launches?

Filed Under: Ask Gobala Tagged With:
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: , ,
June 4, 2009 By

Why Financial Freedom Isn’t Possible For Some

I got this email from a blog reader:

Hi Gobala,

I am trying to understand more on making money online as currently I am unemployed. I have tried to course around for opportunity and found your site. I know most of your information is in your books but currently I am really really budget tight and desperately looking for cheaper method to earn some money. Can you please help me in this? I want to be financially free just like you. Can you provide me with advice to do it?

Thank you so very much.

Dxxxxx

And my carefully crafted reply:

Hi Dxxxxx,

Yes I recommend the book, you can get it at MPH at just RM39. It’s an extremely low investment to achieve financial freedom. I haven’t come across any cheaper way.

You can’t achieve financial freedom if everything you know till now has led you away from it. A J.O.B mentality of spending nothing and getting paid doesn’t apply in the pursuit of financial freedom. RM39 is too “expensive” for some, yet I’m sure they spend twice the amount on entertainment every week.

You can’t achieve financial freedom if you don’t make sacrifices. I lived without TV for 3 years, spent thousands on books and learning materials over the years.

You especially can’t achieve financial freedom is you’re no willing in your most powerful asset, knowledge.

What got you here, won’t get you there.

Filed Under: Ask Gobala Tagged With:
March 21, 2008 By

10 Silly Mistakes Even Internet Marketing Experts Make

gk-parked

Some of you may have seen something like the image above if you visited my blog in a few days- my domain got parked by GoDaddy. In fact I managed to renew it just in time before the domain expired and was put under GoDaddy’s expired domains market, which would mean that I will have to pay USD1,000+/- to get it back. Luckily for me, I had to pay only regular domain renewal fees.

In my case it was not a typical rookie mistake. I DID put my domain on auto-renew ever since I bought it but the problem is last month the credit card I’ve been using for over 5 years expired, and I was issued a new card. This meant that any recurring payment using the old card will fail as the new card has a different security number (at the back of the card).

To make things worse, during the renewal date I was in Indonesia for a 5-day holiday and had almost no Internet access. I went online for a couple of minutes but there were so many emails, I must have missed the warning notice from GoDaddy.

All things said, it was still rather silly on my part.

This brings me to an interesting topic – silly things we do as marketers.

Here’s a list of them, tell me if you’ve done any of it before:

  1. iStock_000002680448SmallAnti Domain-Auto-Renewal - As I mentioned in the story above. I’ve lost one or two domains before from this but those domains were not critical to my business. Still, the guy who got it just put up a “domain parking” page with loads of ads and is probably still getting some cash out of it.
  2. Bad English Domains – I’ve done this with 2 domain names. The funny thing just as you hit the “Order” button you suddenly realize the spelling error but it’s just too late and you’re stuck with that domain for a year.
  3. See Only, Don’t Buy – I once spent $230 a day in AdWords and got up the next morning to zero sales. I realized not too log after that the order link was broken – and I felt like a total idiot.
  4. Neighborly Love is Bad - I once wrote the wrong address for my Aweber commissions, resulting in the checks being sent to my neighbor. Luckily for me, he had already move out by then and I retrieved my check from his mail box after checking my Aweber affiliate profile.
  5. Who Moved My Affiliate Checks? – Sometimes people move around. I moved from apartment to house to apartment (5 times) in the past 4 years and I’m pretty sure there were some miniscule affiliate programs I signed up with that finally sent me a check – just to the wrong address!
  6. Wrong Paypal Address – I did this once, send a huge sum of money to the wrong person. The I had to file a dispute and only through the grace of the receiver did I get my money back.
  7. Come See My Download Files – In Cpanel you can choose to disable indexes of your directories. This way when someone types in yoursite.com/images they wont be able to see a listing of all the images. Most importantly, if they type in yoursite.com/download and you have no index page there (htm/html/php) they will be able to steal your products. If you have a WordPress blog, try typing in yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins and you will see what I mean :)
  8. Premature Ejaculation- I’ve sent out an email for an affiliate product that read “Product X Is Live Now” only to realize that it would a good 12 hours before that happened. In my case you could forgive me because converting between time zones can be confusing.
  9. Backups Are For Wimps - It’s soo easy to delete stuff, and by “stuff” I mean anything from your website files, your e-book source MS Word files, your database (MySQL databases are very easy to delete, just one click) and even your important emails with your login details. Then you realize you didn’t create a backup and you’re screwed. No choice but to spend another 15 days re-writing the same ebook.
  10. [yourname, [fistname], Who’s Name? – How many times have you sent out an autoresponder broadcast email and got the variables wrong? Instead of getting “Hello Gobala” you get “Hello [firstname” – this always happens when: (a) You have more than one autoresponder service and each uses different variables, and you “copy and paste” carelessly (2) you typed in the variables manually, and you made a typo, oops!

Well there you go, 10 silly mistake even Internet marketing veterans make. I made all 10 of them, how many have you got?

Filed Under: Ask Gobala Tagged With: , , , ,
October 3, 2007 By

Making Money With Audio Interviews

CoverSmall Creating an ebook is not the only way to make money from information marketing. In fact, writing an ebook is one of the hardest ways to do it.

For my next product, I want to cover the topic of creating audio interview products. The idea is simple:

  • Find an expert / experts
  • Interview the expert
  • Convert into MP3
  • Set-up a salespage
  • Get JV promotions / advertise
  • Make money

I’d like to do something I haven’t done in a while, which is get YOUR feedback. If you’re thinking of creating your own audio products, please help me by submitting your most important question here:

www.easyaudioproducts.com/ask.php

Please submit only question on the topic, anything that you feel should be covered in the product itself.

If you have general comment, please comment here instead.

Filed Under: Ask Gobala
December 10, 2006 By

ASK Gobala – October 2006 Questions Answered

-

Ok it’s December now and i just got to the October questions submitted at AskGobala.com

Sorry for the delay, but I hope these answers still help you somewhat.

If your questions are answered here, it’s because:

  • It is a product related or support question – For product / support enquiries, although I clearly state NOT to submit to AskGobala.com a lot of people just don’t read instructions! Submit product / support questions to the support center.
  • There is a similar question asked by someone else - please read the list of questions below
  • Your question is way too general - i can only answer detailed questions. My answer to general questions is “Maybe. It depends on the situation” or “I don’t know”.
  • I cant understand your question – some questions are so confusing I can’t understand it even after reading it several times.

These are the question answered, in order received:

  1. Ibnu Asad - I am in the process of writing an ebook that teaches people how to get a site from PR0 to PR4 for free by making myspace to link to the website. I have made some researches at several forums and I am confident that nobody else has written this kind of ebook before. Since that you and I are Malaysian, I figured that we can work something out and make profits together with the ebook. This is my first ebook that I am writing and I am hoping to get some tips from you.
  2. kamala – Dear Gobala, I have a matrimonial website uploaded 6 months ago,but I don,t have a payment getway,I have tried many companys and non can give me a satisfying solution. The way I see it has, they only interesed in collecting money from me than actualy solving my problem. Is there a way I can reg. with any of the payment gateway like paypal,clickbank and others and receive money from local bank? Thank you
  3. Jason Blair – what do you think about google cracking down on templated adsense sites, and if you buy a package how do you make sure that your site does not get tagged as a template
  4. Pang - Mr Gobala, I have a question regarding the paypal account, is it we really need a singapore adrress and singapore credits card to enable we to register? Have you ever heard about stormpay? is it save?
  5. albert – What do you know about swisscash multual fund. If it is not a scam, it defies logic that an organization can achieve 300% returns on investment. How to find out the truth?
  6. Fauzi Ahmad – I am fauzi, from perlis Gobala, you have any system email, to make subcribe and send messages to many people at one click. I not computer programer, I see you website very top hits, so any idea, send me. Thanks Fauzi www.binaexcel.net
  7. MAIKAL – HOW I GET SPECIALL EMAIL LIKE GOBALA.COM / SUPPORT.COM? AND OTHER QUESTION HOW TO GET DISCLAIMER COPYRIGHT LIKE YOU BLOG? SORRY I ASK THIS QUESTION DUE I BEGINNER IN INTERNET FIELD
  8. Low Shu Chiun – Hi Gobala, I’m using google adsense now. How do I bring the most traffic to my website ? How can you help me on that ? Please advise.
  9. zul - can we generate money when visitor leave website that has google adsense?
  10. Md Shazli Bin Md Kasim – hi gk. i’ve been doing a lot of research and studying on online marketing/business for the past 2 years but i have no idea how to/where to/what to start with. i’ve tried numerous ways to find out a niche market. i’ve did some planning but it all didn’t work or doesn’t seem to fit me. to start an online business, i believe the first step that i’d like to do is to resell your chapter-m. i strongly believe with your guidance, perhaps it’ll be much clearer what i need to do to make an income using the internet. i’ve lots of questions to ask and i don’t know where to begin with. hope to hear a reply real quick! thanks!!!
  11. sesha sai m - I am a beginer in internet marketing and yet to make a buck. Presently, I am promoting a product of click bank thro; google adwords. Though, the ad is active and the report is showing number of clicks amd the money is debited to my account, there is no sale generated, as per the report. As I can understand the product is good. Can you please comment. with warm regards, sesha sai muppavarapu
  12. AINIYAH AZMI I – remember last time you send me an email to at your blog on spending thousands of dollars scam on making webpages.Is it something to do with the money tree program.OMNI WEBSITE SOFTWARE? I need your help to clarify this to avoid wasting money or get scammed?
  13. evian – May I know how much Clickbank charge for opening an account with them, and compared to paypal and 2checkout.com. Thank you.
  14. Leroy Lim - hi gobala, roy ere, i bought your ebook chapter M as Malaysians can we purchase products from clickbank? thanks
  15. Ricky - Hi Gobala. I bought your book recently and I am in the midst of developing a website selling clothing. I have 2 questions. I am using Yahoo Sitebuilder and PayPal. Is it necessary to use a shopping cart? What do you think of free shopping carts like OSCommerce and VP-ASP? I also plan to use 2Checkout as they recognise more countries including Malaysia. Do you know if I can integrate 2Checkout into Yahoo Sitebuilder? regards Ricky
  16. Siva - Hi Gobala, How to become member with clickbank, where to get your e-book related to it

P/S: These are also helpful, so please do have a look:

  • Any questions about getting payment from Paypal / Clickbank, for Malaysians, please refer here.
  • Any questions about what software to use for e-commerce, please refer here.
Filed Under: Ask Gobala
September 28, 2006 By

ASK Gobala – September 2006 Questions Answered

-

This is my reply / advice for all questions submitted to www.AskGobala.com. If your questions is listed below, I have answered them on this week’s podcast:

1) uzair: i have been down because i dont know what website i want ti built and what the niche product.i want to be your protege

2) Jee: Hi Gobala, Do you know where to download free autoresponder with email verification? Means when someone keys in the name and email address, an email while be sent to his email address to confirm the opt-in, then only send him the landing page. Hope to receive yr reply ASAP.

3) sathasivam: i am a malaysian, can i receive money from paypal e-mail? if yes how? pls reply me as soon as possible.

4) sjaffril: Hi Gobala, Have you or any of your local malaysian friends tried money bookers before ? If you do, what is your opinion or any feedback from them.

5) albert: Are you selling your e-book using USD and not RM? It is rather strange to do business in USD in Malaysia. Customers will pay more for nothing ‘cos of the loss in the exchange rate.

6) Dundang Bantin: It’s almost 3 months now I work through site after site and buying their products (such as 404 secrets.com, HomeDataTypers.com, PowerlinkGenerator.com,) I still cannot start with my business and haven’t earning yet. Where shall I start? I am still hoping to use PayPal without to open an account in Singapore. I hope the Malaysiapal can help me with this later. Thank you.

7) faisal: Hi Gobala..good work on chapter-m, but is there any bank in malaysia that can accept U.S Dollar cheque from clickbank? so cheques sent to virtual office in singapore can easily be deposited into malaysian bank without cirrus/maestro withdrawal charges?

8) syed: dear gobala, how can start an online biz without any knowledge of online marketing, furthermore, i don’t even know how to create a website. thanks for your help.

9) Zaleha: Hi Gobala, Can you spare me a few reliable Affiliate Programs/Networks that do not involve Clickbank? Thank you.

10) senja: Hi Gobala, I really want to start Affiliate Business, but do not know where to start. I am planning to take a class room like affiliateclassroom, what do you suggest ? I think I need a coaching. 2. Do you have any idea where can I start building my website. Site Build It is expensive and it does not has monthly payment. You said frontpage can be used , does it easy if we want to upload it into hosting. Does it compatible with affiliate business. thanks

11) Paul Richard: Hi Bala, I am very interested with the Forex Internet Exchange Business but I am having a problem of creating the E-Gold. I am most gratful if you could advice me how to create the E-Gold and then how to convert it back to Malaysia Dollar.Looking forward for your advice.

12) Rammel Firdaus: Hi, I would like to know, how to insert google adsense in a blog page? Thanks

If your questions are not answered, I’m really sorry. I’ll try to answer them in the next FAQ Podcast. Also, sorry I don’t have a text version available as there wasn’t much time.

One reminder: Don’t submit product-related questions (billing, payment method etc) to www.AskGobala.com. Use my support center instead. Please?

Filed Under: Ask Gobala, Podcasts