Contest – Bad Idea?

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Hendry

Following my attempt to discard SEO method and focusing more on direct-contact with potential customer, I’ve held 2 contest until now. Both of them aiming to get more reviews for my site and increase my credibility (since I despise the idea of putting reviews myself or paying contractor for it, it has to be original from users)

On the first contest, I tried with something useful as prize. My pick goes to a membership site which seem to be quite well known in my niche. I promised 3 month worth of membership on that site and set an arrangement in place with the owner.

The contest run for a month and ended poorly. I have nearly enough new reviews that I have to cancel 2nd prize and only give the 1st one. I assumed that the lack of participants was due to:

1. Lack of PR; very few people know about it

2. The prizes arent as attractive as I thought

So 2 months after that I held another contest. This time I promised cash prizes for 3 winners, which I suppose will be more attractive. In addition, I increase the requirements to 2 reviews per participants. This time, I spent more money on paid ad to advertise the contest and prolong the contest to 1.5 months.

The contest just ended and I got a bunch of new reviews, but if I measure it to about 700 bucks I spent on prizes and ads, it seems insubstantial.

Well, no more contest for the time being I guess. Seeing the views, I’m thinking about spending more on the same ad source on different project, but we’ll see.

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The Runaway Girl(s)

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Hendry

“I need to find a mirror” , was what I thought to myslef when it happened the 2nd time. By “it”, I refer to the event(s) that I now call “the runaway girl(s)”

It (the first one) happened when I came late to a seminar in my Church (it’s not actually in the church, but the building next to it). I arrived late, so all people I know already inside. I didn’t know the exact room for the seminar, the only thing I know was the event is held on the 2nd floor, so I walked toward the stairs.

Before I got to the bottom stair, a girl crossed my path; from the direction she’s heading and her age, I’m assuming that she’s on the way to the same seminar as me (since it was seminar for young people). She was quite attractive with wide jaw and eyes that show both intelligence and childlike innocence though what caught my interest immediately was the way she dressed herself: decent, but still attractive without being too ostentatious. Not the thing girls wear to flaunt their skins to ogling guys, but neither was the conservative-boring outfit widely wore among the church girls.

So I decided to be friendly and asked “Are you going to [the seminar name]?” She smiled shyly and dashed to the stair. A decently dressed shy girl. Okay. Didn’t expect that one. I climbed slowly behind her and notice that she wore strappy golden thick sole shoes, which made her even harder to miss. Bold choice, considering the color doesn’t match her outfit, but it still looked good on her.

By the time I got to the top stairs, she already checked all the rooms on 2nd floor and heading back to the stairs, so I asked again, “Is it not here?” She shot me another shy smile and climbed down the stairs in a hurry. What is wrong with this girl? She can’t be mute right? But I decided that she’s just overly shy around guy she didn’t know and glanced around the 2nd floor. The rooms are partitioned with glass, so it’s easy to see which one is occupied. All of them were dark.

I stand there considering my next course of action. She looked like she knows the way around here, so I can just follow her to find the seminar room. I can still hear her footstep halfway the flights, so she’s still near. But who knows what she’ll do if I start stalking her? She’d probably run down the stairs, ended tripped and jumbled all the way to the bottom, and it’ll be my fault of course. So I dial the number written on the invitation and a guy from the seminar came to fetch me up. I saw her in the room and, well, she’s obviously isn’t mute since she asked questions to the speaker during the seminar.

The 2nd one happened about 2 months after that. I was late and heading to the same stairs in the same building when I noticed a girl walked to the same stairs. This time it was a girl I know since we were on a cell session once. I called her name and she replied although didn’t slow down very much.

When we climbed the stair, I adjusted my speed and placed myself beside her to chat. It last about 2 seconds before she suddenly increased her pace, climbing the stairs in rapid succession. It startled me and I react immediately by slowing down my pace and look at her, aghast. What the…?? She reached the top stairs and still running at full speed, so I fished my cell from my pocket and pretend to do something with it to give her chance to reach the seminar room first. I saw her in the room, and just like on the cell session, she spend the entire seminar fidgeting with her gadget, wonder why she came in the first place.

So the first time it happened, it didn’t really bother me, but after “the runaway girl” happened a 2nd time, I started wondering. I need to find myself a mirror. Seriously, what did they saw in me that they feel the need to run immediately? A serial killer? A psychopath? Kidnapper? Terrorist? Mass murderer? I just can’t comprehend, and to be honest, I still can’t until now

Hope you enjoy the story :)


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Comfort Zone

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Hendry

The Desperate Act

On June 2012, since I did not see any significant progress on my sites (they keep bouncing on Google results), I decided to accept a work offer from a company where I’ve been an affiliate. Around that time, all I think is “survive first, then you can do something about the sites”, thus I set pretty low salary on negotiation (enough to survive) and to keep myself to the “real goal”

Over the following months, I (once again) find myself doing double shift work. The job was demanding and I decided to treat my employer fairly for my time that they’ve bought. Following the example of my mentor, I worked on office hour and kept my messenger on until late night for better support. At the same time, I also decided to ditch all my sites except 2, then do an overhaul to one of them, transforming it into a user-powered review site and make it more credible.

The Double Shift

I was very tiring and time consuming. I have to keep answering questions and inquiries until late night while taking care of my own sites. Mostly I outsource the site work, but there are things that I must do by myself and the progress was really slow. I did not have time to nag lazy contractors that won’t turn their work on time, but don’t have time to do interview and find better ones either.

By the end of 2012, I finally decided to ditch one of the sites too, focusing on the user-powered review site. The database, data input, and the review function finally done. The contractor run away after I paid him even though one of the functions still have problem. I made mental note not to pay any contractor for un-tested work and tried not to let that got into my nerve too much. But still no serious income from this site, meanwhile my day job’s salary kept increasing to the point that I started being comfortable and ditch much time I should’ve used to work on my site.

The Comfort Zone

Early 2013, I decided to fill my reviews (after all, what is a review site’s worth without actual user reviews?). So I chose a prize (2 actually) and do some kind of contest/lucky draw to attract people to actually post review on my site. I announce via youtube, twitter, facebook, social bookmark, etc. The program ran for a month and I got exactly TWO additional reviews on my site, which really disheartening. I cut the winner to 1 and give him the prize. Meanwhile, for whatever reason, my day job kept getting better (salary wise) and I started to lost my priorities. It even come to a point where I could put strikethroughs on some of my monthly target income in my bucket list, but I just can’t do it since I wrote them down there for entirely different purpose.

So beside a lame SEO effort using pat flynn’s 2012 (or was it 2011?) strategy and having a contractor filling a new post every day, I pretty much doing nothing to improve/promote my site. I decided not to put too much hope on SEO and use more direct-to-audience methods, but just can’t find a good way to do that. Probably mostly because I don’t put too much effort either, being all comfortable with my current day job’s salary.

What’s Next?

Logically speaking, I fully realize that keeping my current day job would hinder me from things I want to do in my bucket list. However, the lack of excitement and motivation to improve the site keep making me found an excuse(s) NOT to do something about it. There are two course of actions regarding my business (if I could call it that) that I can think now:

1. Forcing myself to work on this site. This is logically right, since I’ve spent much to develop and promote it

2. Ditch it altogether and try to find something that actually excite me, something that I could work on with passion rather that having to tune out the feeling “just close this and do something else”-voice from my head all the time while working

Up until now, I still cannot decide which one to take

 

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The SEO Game: Can You Win?

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Hendry

So I’ve been doing IM for the past 3 years and 5 months full-time. I guess different marketer has different experience, but from what I’ve experienced so far, I could pretty much answer the above’s question with: No, you CAN’T.

I (and I’m sure a lot of other marketers as well) have realized this fact long ago. On September last year, I did said in my post “We live from Google while fighting it at the same time” which pretty much sum all the problems all marketers have with G today.

There are only simple 2 facts:

1. G wants to provide it’s user the best result. The job would normally be easier since all it has to do is counting (natural *cough* *cough*) links to a certain page for a particular keyword and it’be pretty much set.

2. We (the IMer generation from 2000′s) took a mission of utilizing this fact and build unnatural links (call it White/Grey/Black hat, it’s all the same for G) to make our pages pop on G first page.

G, who’re afraid of being left out by its user for providing trash content on its first page, start the campaign against us. Meanwhile, on the IMer side, people keep looking for new tricks to “fool” G. It leads to a long battle, but the winner is pretty much set.

We could try smart-ass tricks or using expensive software/services, but one thing that will never change is we play on their field and they’re the one who set the RULES. It’s pretty much game over for us SEOer. The one who keep making money from this are:

- The IM Gurus who are selling the illusion of SEO. They keep rambling about “G loves this” and “G loves that” or “SEO for the new age” or anything like that. Whenever new update comes up and sites got shot down, they always ready with the “brand new course” to save the day and empty your pocket.

- The SEO service providers: backlinker, blog network, article submitter, EDU/GOV link seller etc. There’s no end to them and I guess it’s because their “market” (us) is big and quite easy to be fooled.

I build my sites based on SEO as well. That means years of adding unique content around particular keywords and endless backlinking via various methods: blog network, article directories, profiles, comment, EDU/GOV, etc. My main site got around 600 UV/day, then after the Panda, it dropped to around 400 UV/day. Just now, after they shot down BMR, SEOLV Elite, and ALN (no, I don’t use any of them. My guess is they also shot down AMA, which I’ve been using for years), it dropped again to around 100 UV/day.

Well, for better or worse, I’ve seen this coming long ago so I didn’t really surprised when it happens. For that reason too, I’ve been experimenting with paid traffic (which I assume is more reliable) for a while now, but due to limited fund, I only able to test one at a time.

After my adwords account got closed on December, I’ve been looking for other way to generate traffic. My mission are:

1. Build an authority site.

I still have to learn a lot in this matter. The traffic will probably should come from YouTube, Facebook, forums, or other blogs. Guest posting has been pain-in-the-ass since it’s quite difficult to get a popular blog owners to agree for it. Some blogs even charge money if you want to guest post on their blog. I always look for blog under under 1million in Alexa (less will be even more difficult) and so far only manage to score 3 guest posts.

It’s a long term process I guess. I also need to build FB fan page, twitter page, etc.

2. Try other paid traffic

I’m currently experimenting on PPV to sell CPA offer. This kind of traffic can be used to build a list, but it’ll be hard to track which one really convert and not, so for the time being I’m focusing on CPA offer.

Having ran multiple offers for the past few months, I think I’ve found which affiliate and ppv network I could trust and decided to stick with them. I said this because (I think) I’ve experienced stealing by a ppv network. It was a campaign that I ran and generate quite good conversion rate (the LP even has about 40%) CTR. Then, suddenly I didn’t get much traffic anymore. Usually I spent $5-$10 easily (depend on my caps) and it burned down quickly (as it should be), but all of a sudden, the traffic is “capped” below 100/day and I spend “conveniently” around $1.4 per day. I add a bunch more keywords and nothing happened. I asked the PPV network and they told me to raise my bid. My bid were standard and if I raised it it’ll be overpriced, besides, there is no data of other bidder on the bid info. Nevertheless, I raise it anyway, and of course, nothing happen.

The only thing I can think is they capped my budget at $1.4/day instead of $10 that I set, then “sell” the rest of targeted traffic directly to the merchant. I just know that this could happen after reading a blog of an affiliate manager of a big PPV network.

Well, lesson learned. I’d just burn the rest of my fund (which will take a while since I only spend $1.4/day) and never use them again.

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How to Burn Sixteen Grand A Night – Do You Have What It Takes to Say “NO”?

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Hendry

Okay, the title is inspired from Tim Ferris’ “How to burn one million dollars a night” and even though 16 grand is nothing compared to 1 million dollars, it’s still mean a lot here. So, what the heck that I’m talking about and what does it has to do with these number? I’m talking about OPTION and how often it’s being forced at us as if we have nothing else aside from accepting it.

I’m in my 30s now and a bunch of my friends/relatives are start getting married (had 3, maybe more marriages this year) and while the party was nice with foods and songs and dancers and all, I just come with realization that they (the one who’s wedded) don’t have much option in this. And that’s where they have to burn 10-20 grand a night for the wedding party whether they want it or not.

“But who doesn’t want a wedding party? Don’t you want to have something to remember your wedding?” Of course, everybody does, but young people my age today has more practical reasoning before not-having-a-wedding-party thing.

Let’s look a few facts (in my country):
- the average salary for people worked for several years today is between 300-800 dollars a month
- decent house is priced between 60 to 150 grand. After the wedding, you have to pay 20% up front and then working your ass off to pay your mortgage for another 10-15 years.
- you’ll probably have kids later, which will make you have to work twice as hard as before

With this considered, a few friends I’ve talked to said they rather choose to use that 15 grand for something else. “Heck, if I have any saying in this, I’ll use that to buy a tour to Europe or other countries I never visited” said one of them. Those 16 grand probably can be used for front payment for bigger house or buying furniture and other house appliances. You probably can go to Italy for your honeymoon instead of booking a room in nearby beach and come back after a week. But NO, they don’t have any saying in this because the decision lay in their PARENTS.

This is one of the Chinese legacy that left with us and we the youngsters has to live with it:
- You MUST have a party for your wedding where your parents can invite every single relatives of theirs. Heck, you parents relatives perhaps consist of 60% or more of the guests.

- Your invitation MUST have another page written in Chinese on it. Lots of us youngsters who born in this country hardly speak Chinese at all and don’t see any point doing this, but NO, you HAVE TO, because your parents will be all freaked up if you don’t.

- Thinking of buffet and standing party? Two words: FORGET IT. You must calculate how many guests will come (with families, partner, or kids), then COUNT THE TABLES. Each table consist of 10 people and there will be 7 types of dishes served in timely manner. If you can get a deal, it’ll be around 120-150 dollars per table times 50-100 tables.

- Well, since you have to entertain the guests while waiting for the 7 dishes all served, it’s time to bring out the dancers, comedians, singers, and all. More extra expense.

- You found this cheap master of ceremony who can do his job just fine, but NO, your mom wants the MC to speak Chinese so he can welcome the guests in Chinese (regardless the fact that only a handful of the guests understand or actually listening to what he said) and speak “kanpaaii” when the time to toast has came. Oh by the way, this kind of MC is six times more expensive than the regular one.

With this in mind, I saw all of those in my recent wedding party. All of it:

- singer and band that nobody even aware that they exist

- comedian that do nothing but bullying his own employers and think that acting bizzare while crossdressing is actually funny (somebody really has to teach this guy the meaning of entertainment)

- a bunch of dancers with lame choreography and movements that I doubt they ever attend dancing school. Can’t even remember how many performances they did and how many costumes they changed into.

- Some boring games as an excuse to give doorprizes to the guests.

- Some mediocre photoshots and video editing that can be displayed to the guest while they’re eating. The whole thing is arranged and simply pretentious. I mean, the whole hugging and kissing is not in our culture, but at a wedding day they hired a scenario writer and MC that makes you kiss your father/mother in law and hugging each other. I can almost be sure that the wedding is the only time in their life where they’re hug and kiss their mother/father in law.

To put it simply, the whole thing reeks “we have to do it cause other do it too” and “we have to do it because it’s TRADITION”. The Event Organizer, the ballroom owner, the photographer and all simply catch this “MUST BE DONE” thing and overcharge everything. Seriously, I don’t think those dancers worth 300 bucks, or  those dresses and photographs worth 4500 dollars, or those balloons and decorations worth as much as they charged on . The whole thing is a rip-off and they take a really good money from it.

Seriously, I think it’s better for them (and for the guests) if they just have a buffet party that over within an hour instead of this party that takes almost 6 hours total. It exhaust everyone and doesn’t benefit any aside from the EO. Heck, even with 16 grand being thrown out that night, the one that I recall the most is the hot EO field agent in all-professional-black-blazers and a cute reception girl that got picked up by a tattooed guy after the party was over :D .

The whole thing didn’t need to happen if they simply have the courage to say NO and decide things on their own. It’s their life. It’s their hard-earned money. Sure things will get heated up for a while, but hard feeling passes and in a few years, no one will even remember about it again. The question is, do you have the courage to say NO and deal with the fire that follows it?

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