Archive for March, 2008

Firstly, it’s been a hectic week.

Nice surprises waited for me when I reached home yesterday after a grueling week meeting friends, colleagues and other governmental issues and had a nice time meeting the Aductions Inc team at their new office in Damansara, Centerpoint Bandar Utama.

One is a small award from Helium about my work on Apple iTunes, think it was $5. Well, it’s for fun anyway, I was working towards the Reward-a-thon

Second, Petronas sent me a letter telling me I won RM400. Well, it’s something not right I was saying…anyway, I’m too tired to think of now.

OPEN TENDER

Well, it is a simple thing. Ali Baba is like a robin hood, but then ALIBABA China has made themselves PUBLIC LISTED.

Whatever it is, I want a similar script to it, as there is a need for the new agenda set by my board. They want ALI BABA and the CLONE, lock stock and barrel.

So, the interface must be simple with a functionality to cross translate it into another language on the fly, CHINESE or ARABIC SCRIPT.
It must also have it’s own Load balancing system, and database throttling.
System should be able to take 10,000 hits a minute.

Tenders, please trackback this post with details.

thanks.

I’m just publicizing this for an associated company that they wanted to give some placements for Interns aka Job Training Placements / On the Job Training for a few people with these skills.

Contracts will be awarded with possibility of long term employment with the Group of Companies with good pay. Any queries should be directed to employment at iexploreasiagroup dot com.

WEB DESIGNERS / Graphic Designers X 3
Must have good sense of photography , graphic design and CSS. Some sort of prior portfolio is required. Skills needed : Photoshop and some kind of creative works. Work assigned will be with the Graphics Design team to produce some Rich Media projects. Flash and Macromedia skills are preferred but will be provided.

PHP Programmer. X 5
Some sort of PHP and SQL Skills are needed. Knowledge of coding and modification of php software is needed. IONCUBE knowledge is preferred. Prodigies must work as a team and work under pressure. Successful candidates will be rewarded with a rewarding career.

Administration
Candidates should be able to have basic communication skills. Knowledge of accounting is preferred.

For all the above posts, Conversant in English is a requirement.

How to apply?

Create a blog post on your own site to this post (trackback) and send an email to employment at iexploreasiagroup dot com with your plain text resume stating your name, email address,contact details and such. We have a few other positions for our Singapore Office. These placements will be held in our office at Damansara area. Rates will depend on your skill and work load. Overtime will be given for out of hours.

No Agencies Please

Yes. I thought it was a fluke…but I am hoping that it’s going to stay.

I lost my page rank and alexa ranking last year because the good people at PayPerPost aka IZEA aka MINDCOMET thought it was a good joke to place WORST BLOGGER OF ALL TIME award to hit out at people like me, Perez Hilton and ObNoxious Blogger like some people, but hardly, I don’t care much then, until Google Smacked Me…means my Adsense are dead ..along with my other advertisers shying away from us.

Anyway, I battled it out, and seems I won. I am still getting you to read my posts, and articles which are paying about $15 a pop on Helium (it’s NOT PAID POSTS, but rather Independent Contributions) which… I love to contribute the proceeds to Charity, like Teachers Without Borders.

All I am asking is to be blessed with all these, and wish you to link me, in exchange.. I will

Well, I was reading Tim’s post of him going to Singapore National Eye Center and well, I know it’s a nice posh place for the eye to soothe, just as how the Skin Center is. What I care was, to check on the status of my medical appointment for my upcoming full check up.

That is part and parcel of living as a Singaporean, we have to follow law and do our time and pay our dues. What I know is that..I am waiting for my driving license so that I can get on with my life.

What surprised me is that…..the Status of my Drivers’ License:

eXtract from EDDIES
LICENSE NUMBER : S7*****9I
STATUS OF DRIVING LICENSE : VALID / MEDICAL SUSPENSION
CLASSES OF LICENSE : 2B,2A,2,3,4A
VOCATIONAL DRIVING LICENSE : 2
EXPIRY DATE : Valid for life unless revoked, suspended or disqualified.
COMMENT : REFERRAL TO SNEC, TTSH-CDC . EXP MED RMR.
AUTHORITY : HQMC,SAF.PSY MED BOARD.

What? They suspended my license?They wanted me to attend a full eye checked out and what? because I traveled far and wide that Bangladesh had SARS & JE now?
This is really a pain in the butt. And by the guys at psychiatric unit? They think I am still the chao keng officer / executive as before…or was my driving that bad??

Now I really need one of those lesen terbang ah…. Or am I sentenced to the padded cells again?

Well, from the SMS messages I got from my friends working at Penang Bridge this morning … I got more text messages from colleagues who work along side with those with the guys running the tolls..

Sadly, they are all now running to find a new job. All were thought to be silently having pink slips issued out, means termination notices since those stretches are won by the opposition.

No Tolls for us? Pink slips for some…..

More about the Penang bridge removal here…

Now you have a website. Congratulations. It’s the start of your way to success on the Internet Marketing industry.

Did you know that 99.998% of businesses on the web failed because they fail to attract customer or even visitors to the site? It’s actually more costly to advertise on the Internet than of the Print or Terrestrial Mediums. With over card sales hitting over $7.9 Trillion last year, it is a wonder that everyone wants to cash in on the market share.

OK, let’s not get too picky and say your web shop is already up and running. Now you have to drive that traffic into the core of your success: SALES!

There are many ways to drive sales to your site. Mainly it’s the method used to drive that sale. Some used bad karma like spamming or email marketing which are either outsourced or bought from non-approved sources. Others use Affiliate Programs like Commission Junction or Trade Doubler for European target. However, this is very costly. From my own experience, to set one up cost at least $5000 in setup fees plus some other deposits which could cost over $10,000. On top of that, gateway interfaces like affiliate sales and tracking systems cost another bomb.Despite that, affiliates will surely participate in Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising system, so you might as well remove the middle person.

One can start a campaign on Google Adsense for as low as $100. You start off by getting a catchy title for your advertisement,description of the advert, and your URL. You have to insert the relevant keywords of your product or geographical location demographic, regional or ethnic targeting, by income or even setting negative searches (means don’t show if the keyword matches certain settings) and the amount you willing to pay for that click. Mostly,some place a big bid
so that they can get the highest placement upon a mention of a product,keyword,service or by search engine modules.You will get charged just a unit higher than the competitor anyway.

However, that in itself can drag your budget far out, which in mathematical terms, if you have a budget of $100 and you bid $1 per click and the highest competitor paid $0.72 for their bid, you pay $0.73 per click, which gives you approximately 140 clicks. But will that 140 clicks convert to sales? Maybe.If you placed a bid of 5 cents a click and while you get low ranking, you get higher clicks to your site, 2000 clicks! The odds of getting clicks to become sales is the issue.

The topic at hand is how to grow a small business website. I came across a new platform called ADUCTIONS (www.aductions.com) which offers SELF SERVICE pick and choose application system that enable the advertiser to choose who they want to advertise with, either by means of number of clicks,days,impressions or unique visitors. Here,as the website business owner, you get to choose who who affiliate your business with. If the publisher or blogger has a cooking theme like Cooking up a Storm with Kak Mar (www.marlindaradzi.com) with travel and family oriented topics, Martha Steward placed her advertisements for her latest food site alongside with Oprah Winfrey’s latest cooking cook or by Lonely Planet instead of getting Computer related advertising placements on the site. That is what Aductions is about. One can fill an inventory of clicks as low as 5 cents per click for returning or loyal bloggers and their readers to $7 for a small placement in TechCrunch Asia blogger LiewCF which drew million readers a day.

But it all depends on how your budget and mix-and-match skills are, as growing a small business website to a big heavily driven mall is not an easy task. Having a Blog and support site makes the company and the people behind it more human with the humane touch.

It is not an easy issue, affiliate, SEO, Click Driven and all sorts of advertising methods used, as it’s more of a personal fit. If you need more help, the techy guys and gals behind the scenes at Aductions can do a personal recommendation for you, just like a sous chef telling the day’s special, which is complimentary.