What confuses me is how did I start “following” 7 people when I didn’t even use this darn thing? Perhaps this has happened automatically at some point when I read other people’s tweets?

Some twitter expert please come and share some light here, please, I beg you.

How much does PageRank effect traffic?

My Awstats shows a traffic increase from September 2006 to September 2007, traffic was doubled. But September 2008 (last month), my traffic didn’t change quite much at all. The reduction was probably due to the fact that I hardly posted anything in this blog.

PageRank for me isn’t that important, since I mostly make money from affiliate marketing, selling my own products and from email marketing, all of which do not depend on Google’s unpredictable rankings.

However, I do agree that SEO is important. If you’re using WordPress then it’s a little bit easier as the default installation of WordPress is already quite search engine friendly. You can increase the effectiveness of it by reading up on some practical SEO tips for WordPress.

At the end of the day though, what is really important are the royal readers of this blog, my customers, and all my subscribers. To you guys, thanks for reading GobalaKrishnan.com and coming back to see what’s new even though I’ve had some sort of writer’s block recently. I feel much better now!

Google on the other hand, can **** off.

Enjoy.

–

Fine handwork and carvings from the Artisan centers, I actually bought one of them. Made of out sandstone, my sculpture of the Angkor Wat statues weighed more than 5kg and its in my office right now.

Boat ride down the floating village.

And the famous Angkor Wat, surrounded by a massive moat which apparently used to be filled with crocodiles.

The Elephant Terrace near Angkor Wat.

The infamous “Tomb Raider Temple” minus Angelina Jolie.

The holding cells at the Tol Sleung museum (S-21 Prison) where a rather large and beautiful school was transformed into a place of horror during Pol Pot’s regime with the Khmer Rouge. People were captured and tortured for o apparent reason, after which they were usually executed in the Killing Fields.

Skulls of genocide victims on display at the killing fields. People were told to dig graves, after which they were decapitated and buried. Some graves found contained the bodies of children too, so you can see how insane things were in the 1970’s (not too long ago) here.

One picture from taking a boat ride down the Mekong river.

One thing I loved about Cambodia is that they are proud of their culture and legacy, and they turn dark moments in their history to the driving force of their economy. Lots of Buddhist / Hindu influence here and the Cambodians love to talk about it.

In Malaysia however we try to cover-up or change our history, which is as much influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism as Cambodia was. But the government isn’t proud of the fact, so they change the history books, placing less and less emphasis on the pre-Islamic times.

Last I heard from my cousin, they are probably going to remove the name “Parameswara” (founder of Malacca and an important figure) from the history books since it’s a very Indian-sounding name and probably not suitable for our altered version of actual events.

Video produced by GregsVideo.com and was perhaps one of the best decisions I made for my wedding. Both my wife and me were initially very excited about getting married, until my parent stepped in and almost ruined everything for me.

They keep insisting I do things their way, according to “our culture”, and before I knew it the entire wedding was heading off in a different direction. I’m sorry to say I never really followed Indian culture, as I find it rather outdated and shallow. Now I’m being forced into it, like it or not.

A lot arguments later (more like a war) they finally got their way but I decided to get a good video producer so I can have better memories of what’s supposed to be the most important day of my life.

My wife Sheila and me have been going out since February 2006, and after almost 2 years we got engaged. Legally, we were married on 28th May this year. However the cultural ceremonies didn’t take place till 1st September this year.

Sheila works as a journalist for New Straits Times, and she loves her job.

I thank everyone who attended my wedding, and the lunch reception in Melaka on the 14th. It really felt good seeing you guys there.

With all the wedding-related arguments now a thing of the past, I look forward to a happy life with Sheila. This video will be one of the most important things for us to remember our wedding, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me the memories look really good

For all Malaysians trying to make as much money online in the shortest possible time, I invite you to attend my Internet Millionaires BootCamp.

This is a full-day crash course on Internet marketing, blogging for profit, and email marketing. My last event was a tremendous success and completely full house, so I recommend you register early while there’s still seats available.

I love my Aweber account. Ever since I switched over to Aweber from 1ShoppingCart and GetResponse autoresponders, I’ve seen the service improve both in terms of usability (a lot of AJAX-based features), deliverability and most importantly in terms of reporting.

It gives me total control of my mailing list and allows me to do things my friends on GetResponse seem to have a hard time doing; stuff like sending out emails based on country (or even city), RSS broadcasting features, integration with FeedBurner and split-testing emails.

From the screenshot above you can see how just 4 different statistics can give you a complete picture of my mailing list health:

• Bounces - How many emails didn’t reach the subscriber’s inbox, probably due to fake email addresses, space limitations, or other reasons.
• Complaints - How many people report the email as SPAM. I hate those guys.
• Opens - How many people who received your email, actually opens them
• Clicks - How many people clicked on links in your email message (I found using HTML works best for this)

In fact the only thing I regret about Aweber is that I didn’t use it earlier. When I made the switch I had about 500+ subscribers in GetResponse and 8,000+ in 1ShoppingCart. I estimate that only 25% of these made it into my Aweber account when I imported their names. The rest will probably never be recovered.

As per standard procedure, Aweber will send a opt-in confirmation email to everyone you add using the “import” feature. GetResponse and 1ShoppingCart, as well as any other reputable email marketing service, have similar terms as they seek to avoid their service being abused by spammers.

This is why I always tell every one I coach to get the best autoresponder service when getting started, and stick to it. If you try to cut costs, you end up losing out in the long run when you switch services. If you cannot afford Aweber, then at least use GetResponse.

A good email marketing management service is perhaps THE most important investment you can make to ensure success in your home based Internet business, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot by succumbing to the illusion of false economics.

Although I graduated with a degree in “Multimedia Marketing”, perhaps the only thing I remember from college are The 4Ps of Marketing namely:

1. Product
2. Price
3. Packaging
4. Promotion

(A friend told me that they added a fifth P to it, for Pray.)

Sometimes a product gets old and jaded in a marketplace, and instead of going about creating new products you can simply revive the old one by tweaking a few of the Ps.

Now as a student of marketing, I understand very well the effect of Packaging in the overall process. Even if your product is the best in the world, it has very little perceived value if the packaging sucks. A mediocre product with excellent packaging on the other hand can do pretty well in the marketplace. A truly great product with excellent packaging is the ultimate, and not many companies (except Apple) can get it right.

So if you have an older site and you want to jazz it up and get more sales, here’s what you can do:

1. Make updates and add a “Version 2″ or “Second Edition” to visible areas on the site, including the banner of your site and the product e-cover
2. Hire a good web designer to make your theme more “current”, for example I got Design Guru Ryan to give my Web Graphics Monthly site a more modern look
3. Update image and outdated screenshots on your sales page (hint: next time take screenshots without actual dates if possible)
4. Create new marketing graphics and banners

With these 4 simple steps, a product or website that used to be scorching hot can be revived and made more appealing.

Think how many times TV manufacturers, car manufacturers, book publishers and landlords repackage the same stuff (or add on a little to it) to make it seem like a new product altogether. If it works for them, it can work for your home based business as well..

I’m not talking about the type of stuff you’re forced to memorize at work, the ones that go like “We strive to achieve excellence and serve the regional markets to provide better value-added services and increase our shareholder’s value..”

Those type of statements are crap, simple because (1) they are not memorable (2) they mean nothing.

If you’re trying to get opt-in leads from your e-mail marketing campaign, you need a “mission statement”. My definition; a simple statement of an achievable goal; of what someone should expect to get from surrendering their name and email address to you.

For example:

1. Master the guitar in 30 days
2. Lose 30 pounds in 2 weeks
3. Quit your day job in 14 weeks

I was looking at my opt-in boxes for Internet Millionaires Club and I realized that it needs a stronger “mission statement”. Something that would spark the imagination (and curiosity) of potential subscribers.

So here’s the mission statement I created:

You may or may not agree with me, and I may or may not have hit the nail on its head. But don’t you agree that you need to set yourself apart from everyone else in your market?

If you have a Clickbank account, chances are you’re getting paid by check every pay period (2 weeks). If your payments are consistent, ie you have received at least 3 consecutive payments, then you qualify to apply for Clickbank’s direct deposit feature.

ClickBank is pleased to offer International Direct Deposit (XACH) for direct deposit of your ClickBank account payments into certain international bank accounts, at no extra charge.

This will help me save loads of time waiting for checks to appear in my mailbox, and trying to cash in the checks in time to pay other expenses and bills. If you live outside any of the countries where Direct Deposit is allowed (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States), then you can get a non-resident US bank account as an intermediary bank.

Was I facing a really tough writer’s block, or did I just give up on updating my personal blog altogether?

A little bit of both actually. When I first started blogging, this was the only blog I had, and I posted everything here. In fact this blog is responsible for most of my life-long customers, subscribers and fans. However along the way I started a blog about how to make money blogging, one on music marketing, and another on MLM tips, and a while later yet another one about Internet business in Malaysia.

After juggling all blogs (with the help of hired bloggers), I started becoming a slave to my own business working 9am to 11pm and yet my income hardly grew. A classic case of stretching yourself too thin; biting off more than you can chew; or whatever you call it.

I lost my direction for GobalaKrishnan.com - I didn’t know what to write here since now I have all those other blogs where I can publish my content to. So I stopped blogging here and all I could do was to publish one or two rather lame post just for the sake of keeping it updated.

But I wasn’t being lazy.

In fact, I was working harder than ever before. The only thing that changed is that I realized with the time I spent on blogging, I could actually create a lot more of my own product which generated much more income. In the last three months I created Super Affiliate Blogger, wrote Blog Paycheck and even managed to update my first successful product you probably already know as WordPress Adsense System.

As a result, in a two week period in May / June I made $10,882.33 from sales of my own products alone, thanks to the great response to Super Affiliate Blogger. Then I followed up with Blog Paycheck less than 30 days later and that too was a hit, bringing my income level for the next month to more than $8,500.00 from the sales of my own products. This means that by introducing those two products I almost tripled my income.

The funny thing is, since August 2006 the only product I had that generated daily sales was WordPress Adsense System and I never tried to even create a follow-up product to that. Instead I spent most of my time blogging, blogging, and blogging even more. A lot of blog post, and lot of “Thank you for the wonderful resource, you’re such a nice guy..”. But not a lot of money.

Which got me into thinking, is it really worthwhile to write 2-3 blog posts a day like some of the big name bloggers do? Do I really need to be a content-generating machine just to keep up? Do I need to give away so much free information, when it’s proven that I can charge for the information, have more time for myself, and yet keep everyone happy?

The answer is: it depends.

I now realize the difference between “having a blog” and “blogging” - at least in my own definition of those terms. Having a blog is good - after all blogs are still one of the best ways to get traffic and search engine rankings. But to be “blogging” day in and day out is not my cup of tea, especially when it becomes more of a chose than a pleasure.

I now have a new strategy to create more sites, make more money, yet spend less time with day-to-day blogging.

What is it? You’ll need to subscribe to my blog about blogging to find out. I’ll be writing about that soon.

This blog will focus more on strategies, experiences and insights on creating products, copywriting, list building, and direct response marketing. That’s what I’m really good at - selling stuff

A lot of work to do, but I’m going to take my time doing it. It’s more fun that way.