Online Advertising World - Where Is It Heading?

Actually I don’t want to make a new post today but I just read two very interesting articles from TechCruch where Professor Eric Clemons and his white beard stated something negative about online advertising world: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-the-internet/

and

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/28/steel-cage-debate-on-the-future-of-online-advertising-danny-sullivan-vs-eric-clemons/

Inside the 2nd article, someone named Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineLand made his own statement to fight Eric Clemons’ article regarding the failing of online advertising world. Both articles are quite interesting and you may also want to check the comments. Even Matt Cutts was active there.

Well, as always, I only share what I want to share. These articles are interesting to me so I share it with you guys oh and if you ask my opinion, actually I simply don’t care about where it’s heading. Since the first time I got involved in online advertising world, I never let someone else’s prediction or opinion affected me. I just researched my own competition, my own traffic, my own visitors’ behavior, and do what I have to do. If internet advertising world keeps declining, then we just have to adapt. As simple as that. Probably the only thing that’ll piss me off a bit is I have to study more and more No, just kidding. I always love to study new things and new languages.

But well, if I have to sound my opinion, I guess I would disagree with the old guy (Clemmons). I mean, the current diminishing return of online ads is simply because of global crisis. It affects almost everything (although I don’t see its effect for my businesses). So well, I don’t think it’s such a big deal where the online ad revenue is heading. After all, the whole internet business revenue keeps improving and this is what important the most.

Oh btw, this is my vacation schedule:

* July 09 – Hong Kong (for a week)

*  December 09 – London (for a week, to watch Arsenal live from Emirates Stadium)

* June-July 2010 – South Africa (probably for 2 weeks, don’t know yet .I want to watch World Cup live)

So If you want to meet me in these countries, let me know ok?

Tags: advertising, online, vacation

I’ll be in Hong Kong next July!

Holla everyone! I just want to make a post about my holiday trip next July. I’ll be going to Hong Kong! I think I’ll be there from 16th July but I haven’t decided the date yet. I’m going to “waste” 4 days of my life there before I come back to my usual life I don’t know why should I post this but as I said earlier, I only post something that I want to share. So this is it: I want to go to Hong Kong!  I’ll also meet Howard there, my programmer from China.

If you know me and you want to join my trip, let me know, OK? Btw today is Saturday so I want to say, “HAVE A NICE WEEKEND!”

Business Planning

I learn something very useful in the last one week. It’s about business planning. OK, don’t be skeptical yet…business planning is just a usual thing and very common practice in every commerce world nowadays. But do you realize how many times we forgot about our own business planning when we are already in the middle of our business? For example, you target 10% growth for your traffic every month but if for some reasons you couldn’t achieve your target, you just simply forget it. This is stupid but most people do not realize they repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

When you plan your marketing tactics and if it doesn’t show a satisfying result, you couldn’t just give it up and make plan B. Instead, you should just modify your business plan a bit to make it more realistic but you must remember to always thinking outside the box. I mean, big dreams will make you achieve much better results than just normal dreams. Even during the global financial crisis era, you should still believe you have the power to make you dream comes true. Do not follow what other people told you to do but follow what you want to be. Nobody wants to be a receptionist or security officer, you know what I mean? Even if one day you fail in your business planning, you just have to double your motivation in order to achieve the next goal.

Tags: business, planning

Have You Ever Felt Bored With Your Life?

I rarely think about this but sometimes I felt so bored with my life. Doing the same routine in the last 1-2 years. I can’t imagine if I were working in an office, wearing suit. I might have already killed myself! I’m just a type of person who never felt satisfied with what I have. Well, although sometimes I went on vacation or business trip to outside the country, but I still easily get bored. One of my dreams, as always, is to stay in different countries anywhere I want. For example, I want to work from Spain with my laptop. Then 3 weeks later, I move to United States for another 2-3 weeks. Then I move to China to work for another weeks. This sounds fun although it might distract your focus on your job.

But I will do it one day, maybe next year, maybe in the next 2 years. Even if I manage to build my own established internet company, I would still want to work like this. I know how the world works though and I know it might stop my ambition. All the stupid routine stuffs that force everybody to look busy, to stay in the same country or city for years. It’s just stupid actually because I feel it’s just a cage for our desires. As a man who works from internet, I feel I can break that cage if I want to. Well, what I need is just a laptop and internet connection then I can work from anywhere. But sadly, I’m still dreaming to do it. I still don’t have courage to do it. Maybe because I’m afraid that I won’t get good foods and good place to live if I work like this Also because I don’t want to keep losing money just to pay for apartment/hotel…

It’s the same with my job. I am happy being an affiliate marketer because I make money, some people even say I make shitloads of money. But that’s not the point. I’m getting more and more bored with how the affiliate system works, SEO, adwords, facebook ads, everything. The motivation keeps fading away but I’m glad I found my motivation back in Hymoo. This will be my first step to create a gigantic social discussion platform. I’m glad I fund the project, no regrets

E-books and so-called gurus

On internet, it’s very possible for a man who had nothing like me then suddenly make enormous income within 1-2 years. I have met various people on the internet, whether they are from my country or from international world. That’s how things work. When you work hard, when you plan smart, when you are creative enough, you’ll get success. However, most of these people would think they are really “special” so they create their own money-making e-books.

The reason why some  internet marketers create their own e-books is because they know most amateurs on the net are so stupid and this kind of people sometimes would do anything to learn internet marketing stuffs (I’m glad I never bought any e-books). Basically, people sell money-making e-books to make money for their own, not for the amateurs, because they know it’s quite easy to fool people.

If you tell me people sell their e-book because they want to help others, sorry but it’s just a “mask”. Face the reality. When you want to help others, then help. Selling an e-book and calling yourself a guru is not a wise decision. I’m not blind, I know there are several good e-books and paid lessons on the net. Although I never bought them myself, but usually my friends who bought these rare items would show their membership login details to me so I can check it myself. But if you ask me, I would never create something like this and sell it for money. I keep my knowledge for myself and when I want to share, I’ll just share it.

Tags: e-books, gurus, internet marketers

Big Dream, Do You Have One?

Life without goals is absolutely nothing. Everybody knows that. It’s still amaze me because lots of people still do not have any important goals in their life. I mean, even if they have one, they would feel skeptical about it. If you are someone who don’t have a big dream, you should change your life start from now. It’ll be hard of course to change how we think, but believe me, you’ll get something better eventually.

The difference between someone who dreams big and someone who only wants to be “average” is only their dream. But dream is all you need to be totally different. If you dream to marry a girl you love, make average amount of money, and feel happily ever after, you’ll just be an average guy forever. If you dream big and you do everything you can to get your ambition, no matter what, you will (at least) become a much better person. Well ok, sometimes if you work hard, you still won’t be as good as you wanted to be. Some people even totally failed to be what they want although they already worked hard. This is fact.

However, as I said before, even if you fail you’ll still become a much better person compared to people who don’t have a big dream. And of course, there’ll be always a chance of success for people like me and you. If your brother or your friend tell you he wants to be an accountant, tell him, “I want to make millions next year from my own business”. It may be thickles them but you know you are goddamn serious. Of course, in the end what matters most is your efforts. But once again, when you have a big dream, you can easily eliminate your laziness because you want to get it so bad.

I was born in a not-so optimistic environment, if you know what I mean. My parents never ever expected me to be like this. I can assure you 100% they only expected me to become an average man with earning less than $5000 per month. As long as my needs were enough, they would feel satisfied. But this is not me, I have never thought of myself like that. I even never thought I would work for someone else as an employee. My self-pride always told me to work as an entrepreneur since I were young. My point is, I don’t want to feel “average”. I always want to prove people wrong and I always want to jump higher.

I don’t like being big headed but I think started everything with $10 and made almost 6 digits of US dollars in 2 years is already a good achievement. Of course there are lots of better people compared to me but I mean, not even my parents thought I would become a person like this. I was a fool, a complete idiot, and everybody thought I would not be able to surpass them

To be honest, I’m also not a hard worker. I’m not a type of person who work 8 hours a day. Sometimes I even only spent less than one hour for my websites because like I told you before, my adwords and SEO sites are all running automatically at the moment. Well yeah of course I also sacrifice lots of times for Hymoo planning and also to learn new things from the internet. But I wouldn’t get all of these, I wouldn’t be able to prove my parents wrong, I wouldn’t be able to create Hymoo if I didn’t have a big dream. I think there are millions of better people out there compared to me and I believe 100% they all have big dreams as well.

Tags: dream inspiration goals

When we talked about GreenPeace and Children.org

On Hymoo countdown page, we talked about how we’ll help GreenPeace and Children.org in their attempts to fight global warming and children poverty. We don’t talk bullshit here, it’s real. As part of internet community and more importantly, as a human being, I feel we have to do this although it won’t be forever. Hymoo will be featuring GreenPeace and Children.org’s banner ads for at least the first 3 months FOR FREE. I’m not hypocryte. I won’t feature their campaigns forever but I can assure you the first 3 months we’ll try our best to help them. But I don’t know for how long we are gonna support them.

Talking about charity, maybe it’s time for me personally (and also for you) to make something useful for the world. Have you ever wondered how fortunate you are being in front of your computer/laptop at the moment? I mean, cmon… People sometimes argue about their life. They wished they could be born somewhere else, bla bla bla. But they never realized how fortunate they are compared to poor people in 3rd world countries. They never knew how “UNFORTUNATE” these people are. Born without legs, born without arms, raised without education, can you imagine it?

If you ask me whether this is justice or not, let me tell you something. It’s ourselves who discriminate. It’s ourselves who let them suffer. If you want to help, then help. Making wealth is not easy but doing something useful with your money is ten times harder than that.

How to look at your SERPs and ad positions

Actually I wouldn’t create this post if I never got lots of questions regarding how to look at your real SERPs and ad positions. People sometimes misunderstood where were their websites on Google. This is a very common mistake and I still don’t get it how come they never understand even after I keep reminding them again and again.

So let’s just get to the point. If you type “google.com” directly into your browser, no matter what, you’ll get redirected to Google of your country, not Google.com US. Even if you click the link “google.com in English“, you still won’t see the same results as if you really go to Google.com US. To prove this, try using a proxy service and find US proxies there. Go type “google.com” and search the same keyword. Viola, you’ll see different ads and most of the times different natural listing as well (although not significant).

I usually love to use anonymizer. The complete URL is anonymizer.nntime.com and it still works until I write this. You can also check different proxies from there to get the most accurate ad positions and natural listing from each country on Google. This is crucial for me because when I target US market (for example), I have to know who are my real competitors there. The same thing goes with SEO. If you want to know where’s your site position for Americans, then use US proxy.

Strangely, lots of people out there still do not understand how it works. Sometimes they asked me “hey my site is on the top of Google but why my traffic is much less than I expected?”, well my answer has been always the same, “If you target people from outside of your country, always use proxy before you go to Google”.

Tags: adwords, google, SEO

Alienware and Apple Customer Support - Like Hell and Heaven

As one of Apple reseller business owners and as someone who use Alienware laptop, I want to share my personal experience with these two brands. Alienware and Apple is like hell and heaven. Of course what I mean “hell” here is Alienware and what I mean “heaven” is Apple. Alienware customer support is probably the worst I’ve ever dealt with, it’s even worse than Nokia customer support. While for Apple, it’s probably one of the best.

Despite we don’t have official Apple tech support here in my country, I’m always satisfied with their customer support whenever I need repair. One of my friends ever shipped his MacBook for repair, it had lots of scratch everywhere. When Apple shipped back the laptop, it looked like a new one! They replaced almost everything within one week. You can count on Apple support, really. Lots of my friends told me they extended their AppleCare because of this cool support.

Compared to Alienware, obviously Apple is 100x better. Alienware took more than 3 weeks to repair my Area-51 M15x and they are extremely not transparent. Every time I called them and I asked “can you tell me what’s the problem with my laptop?”, they kept silence. They didn’t want me to know the exact problem of my own laptop. They were even late in shipping back my laptop simply because the replacement CPU was out of stock. Can you believe that? Alienware repair depot in United States doesn’t have enough replacement CPU? My guess is, they had lots of complains so everybody sent back their laptop for repairing.

Alienware also won’t ever answer your question unless they have to. They will only answer when you ask for the tracking number (when they ship back your laptop) or when you ask “what took you so long?”. Other than these questions, they will just ignore you. I heard lots of Alienware bashing everywhere JUST because of their poor customer support. But well, at least I have got my Area-51 M15x back and now it’s working perfectly…

Tags: alienware, apple, laptop

Problems done with LunarPages

Well, as I said in my previous post, there are lots of stupid people and bad companies on the internet no matter how “legal” they are. Well, I have met various of bad people but one of the worst is LunarPages. I won’t give them a free link here but if you are curious about them, just go to lunarpages.com. Don’t be fooled with their cool design.

I have made probably 3 posts about LunarPages and I created all of these because I’m totally pissed off. I had a shared hosting account for my new website with them. Recently, I moved the server from shared hosting account to their VPS hosting plan. But you know what, suddenly they suspended my account with one excuse: I haven’t paid my bills.

This is totally ridiculous because they never sent me any notification/warning regarding this bill. EVERY web hosting service I’ve worked with like Liquidweb always sent me at least 3 emails to notify me when my hosting account almost expired. But lunarpages never told me anything and suddenly they deleted my hosting account. What made it look even more ridiculous is, they never answered to my questions regarding this bill.

Yep, earlier I have created a support ticket asking about various things including “when to pay for this new VPS account” and also “How much should I pay for this VPS account because earlier I’ve paid for 12 months shared hosting account and I only used it for 1 month?” But surprisingly, they always skipped these parts. They answered the other questions but they skipped these questions. You know the end of this story. They suspended my account without notifying me and also AFTER they skipped all of my questions regarding this bill.

*Last Update: After talking with them, my problem finally is really settled. Looks great! They admitted their mistake, they gave me compensation, and I changed my mind about them.

Tags: lunarpages web hosting