The topics I read are very wide – ranging from business, social economic to self-help. If you ask me to spend money and buy new clothes, I will think twice. But if you ask me to buy a book that seems interesting to me, I will just buy straight away.

Previously, I will head to the local bookstores such as MPH or Kinokuniya. But recently I discover an online site where I can buy cheap books. Best of all, it comes with free delivery worldwide! The site: Book Depository

Comparing it with the local bookstores, most of the book I want are either similar in prices or even cheaper. I really wonder how they make a profit. I ordered a book recently and it was sent from the UK. I made another 2 purchases yesterday:

• The Power of Less by Leo Babauta
• The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

But who cares, as long as I can get them cheaply, shop in the comfort of my house and get it delivered straight to my mailbox for free. LOL.

Ever since I discovered Book Depository, I seldom paid a visit to my local book stores already. If you are like me – into buying and reading books, check them out.

Normally I used a proxy to find out my US rankings and it can be troublesome sometimes.  But now I don’t do that because I have found an easier way to do it. Let me show you this simple method.

Let’s say you are searching for car insurance in Google. You will get a long URL like this:

The whole URL is this:

http://www.google.com.sg/#hl=en&q=car+insurance&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=car+insurance&gs_rfai=&fp=990ecd0f5fe550b8

You just need to insert “&gl=us” (without the quotes) at the end of the URL, hit the return key and you will get your US rankings instantly. Here’s what I mean:

http://www.google.com.sg/#hl=en&q=car+insurance&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=car+insurance&gs_rfai=&fp=990ecd0f5fe550b8&gl=us

Using this method, you don’t have to go through a proxy and it’s faster as well! Try it next time.

I guess Finch can express himself  through his writings much better than I can. I share the same sentiments as him and this is exactly how I feel about affiliate marketing, my business and entrepreneurship in general.

I will post some of his excerpts here:

1. For many affiliate marketers, this is the reality. We’ve given up day jobs, broken free from the chains of a Monday-Friday 9-5. But fuck you if you think it came without sacrifice along the way.

2. My weekends? If I wasn’t out socializing, I was working. The only reason I ever managed it was because to me, it was never really work. It was my passion and a step towards where I wanted to be.

3. If you never made a single penny with affiliate marketing, would you still enjoy it?

4. It wasn’t the money I cared about, it was the entrepreneurism of generating something out of nothing on my lonesome.

5. If you’re stargazing at the apparently novel lifestyle of an affiliate marketer, ask him where he came from instead of where he is today.

To get to where we are today, we made a lot of sacrifices. The journey is not smooth sailing and we encounter lots of ups and down. Definitely not for the faint-hearted. LOL.

My dad even asked me why don’t I get a job back (I used to work as a sales engineer). He said I will have a steady paycheck, weekends with no worries, have a company car to drive. Life will be good in his opinions.

Well, I can only say I DON’T like that kind of life. Those who are business owners, internet marketers or self-employed will agree with me.

On a side note, I think my dad will have no complaints if I continue to bring food to the table every month.

• They don’t know how to do it
• They think it’s expensive
• They think they need to show their faces
• They think it’s tedious

Actually it is very simple to do video marketing now. You can use your existing articles and convert them into articles. Treat them as slide shows and present them into video format and upload to YouTube.

How to do it? Simple. By using Instant Video Articles. It’s a simple software that lets you churn out your articles into videos quickly. In fact, I did a demo and create a sample video using the software. Took me less than 5 minutes. Check out the video below.

You may think such software should be very expensive. Well, you are wrong. It cost only a one-time $17!

Click here and get Instant Video Articles now.

I have finally jumped on the bandwagon and become a smartphone user. Before that, my phone was strictly for calls and and sms.

Now I can check my emails on the go, surf the net, peep at facebook, take photographs (5 MP with AF and flash), play games, wi-fi tethering (using my phone as a modem) and lots more. This phone becomes my entertainment companion! No more boring rides on the MRT or buses. LOL.

I knew iPhone 4 is coming out soon. No doubt it’s a very sleek-looking phone with lots of apps and new features. But I hate to use a product that is so commonly adopted by the masses. I read from some articles saying that Singapore has the highest penetration rate for iPhone: 1 out 10 mobile users are using it.So it’s a no-no for me.

Well, I am very pleased with my Samsung Wave till now. So far so good….

So last week, I listed one of my wedding niche’s site at Flippa.com. It’s the eBay for selling websites. The minimum starting bid I was willing to accept was USD147 and the BIN (buy it now) price was USD297. The auction lasted for 14 days. It was only during the last few days that bids were coming in. There were 2 bids initially before the 3rd bidder pop-up and bought my site at the BIN price.

Within a few days after selling my site, the seller realized that I have another niche wedding site. So he asked me whether I wanted to sell that site to him as well. Of course I accepted his proposal, because that’s the next site I want to sell in mind after the first deal was done!

The 2nd site was sold at a higher price at USD340, because the site was earning more money than the first site. So right now, you may ask me: “Why do you want to sell the site if it’s making money for you?” Well, the income earned from these 2 sites are minimum and I feel that it’s not worth my time to continue building them. So, I rather sell it -  let the new owner takes over and bring the sites to a higher level, which I feel I could not do it.

Actually, I was asking for $397. The buyer negotiated for $340. I accepted the deal because I was dealing with him directly this time round. That’s because getting your site listed on Flippa costs USD$19. If the site is successfully sold, you have to pay again a 5%  success fee based on the amount you sold it. I don’t have to pay all these “admin” fees, so I agreed to it. Just a side note: If nobody buys your site after the listing period, your $19 is gone. It’s non-refundable.

Initially I was a little worried about selling websites because I don’t really know the process of transferring websites. You know, you have to back up the SQL database and the wp files and export them to the new domain etc. But heck it, I just give it a try and during the listing period, I read up some guides on transferring sites. So theoretically, I know how to do it. LOL.

Luckily the buyer was quite experienced. I just had to zip up all the necessary files and send it to him as he can do it himself. All I need to do is to push my domain to his account and that’s it!

So the 2 websites were sold for USD$637 last week and I am happy about it.

All you need is to have Skype, and the call will be forwarded to your skype account. Here’s a screen shot below:

As you can see above, all you need is your skype userid. You can even choose the region where you want your number, for example, New York City, Florida, Manhattan etc. You will get a landline number plus your private extension.

For example, if you choose Manhattan, your number will be something like this: +1 646 1234567 ext 123. If you choose Florida, it will be something like +1 305 1234567 ext 789. You get the idea.

As long as you are logged in to skype, people can actually call the number and reached you. It is as if the person calls you locally. This is especially great if you have family members or friends who are residing in US and they call you via their mobile phones. It will be convenient for them and they don’t have to chalk up high phone bills.

The only downside? This Ring2Skype is in beta service. If the site shuts down, your number will be gone as well. So use it while it is still in service.

I was living a routine lifestyle from 7-25 years old, going through the standard Singapore education system. From PSLE to O levels to A levels to National Service to 4-year university degree course.

You get what I mean? I had to study 4 years to get O levels cert, another 2 freaking years to get my A levels cert, another 2.5 torturing years to serve the nation and then the university years. I knew what lies ahead. For majority of the people, I can predict the future for them.

I know what lies ahead for them as well – that is after graduation, work your ass off until you are 65 and retire. In between that, there will be a lot of grumbles: salary is too little, no time, work’s stressful, boss sucks, colleagues suck, incompetent people get promoted etc. Blah blah blah.

For me, after I graduated, life is no longer a straight path. I really have the freedom to do whatever I want. I chose the entrepreneurship route. And never in my whole life will I thought that I will be doing business in Cambodia.

Whether it’s my internet marketing biz or my cafe… I create my own path. I make my own decisions. Whether I fail or succeed, I am the one responsible.

That’s what I call – LIFE

You get to choose what you want to be, where you want to be and how you want to be.

That’s what make life exciting isn’t it? Of course, you need people to give you opportunities and a little bit of luck as well to complete the whole picture.

Dare to dream, dare to fail and live the life you want.

So, my life kinda just started! LOL

However, due to some price changes to the products I am promoting, they are not really converting and the conversion rates drop drastically. My traffic is, in fact, increasing but the sales drop. So, I decided to venture into Clickbank once again. LOL.

So far, the results are promising. The site was up and running on 24th Mar and I got my first sale within 7 days. I only got 26 clicks, and I got the sale. And within the next few days I got another sale. So 2 sales so far with around 50+ clicks. The conversion rate looks good so far with the little traffic I generate.

As usual, I need to get more traffic (at least 500 CTR) before I can conclude whether the product can really convert.

The ways I generate traffic are still the same – it’s old-school but they still work like a charm: Publish good content on my blog, article marketing, directories submission, social bookmarking, carnival submission.

New tip for those who are using article marketing: http://www.thefreelibrary.com

It’s a PR7 site and you can submit your articles there! The highest PageRank for an article submission site I have seen so far. But don’t expect much traffic from there.  Just use it to build backlinks. It doesn’t hurt to have one more backlink from another article submission site . The Kingpin is still EzineArticles where you can get direct traffic from there.

This year, 2010, the next big thing is all about PPV (per-pay-view marketing). If you don’t know what PPV is, this site will be useful to you.

The craze has begun… Big-time marketers are selling their PPV courses, super affiliates are all mentioning about PPV.

As usual, there will be a sudden influx of marketers who will be trying to use PPV to make money online. And this is not good. In my opinion, the outcome will be the same like yester-year PPC craze. Profitable campaigns will become unprofitable.  Newbies will get burnt. Why? Because there were just too many people, all trying to use the same methods simultaneously.

It’s just like bubble tea or the donuts scenario in Singapore. Other people saw that selling donuts were profitable, so they copy and sold donuts as well. In the end, there are so many donuts stores springing up that people are sick of it and it became a fad.

Initially, I wanted to name my title as “Fad Marketing” but I realized that PPC is not a fad. PPC is here to stay. I can’t predict whether PPV is gonna to to be a fad or what, so I just coined the term “herd marketing” instead - that is following or applying a marketing method that everyone else is doing, such that it will lose its effectiveness.

If you are already into PPV long-time, milk the money while you still can. If you are a newbie, I suggest you don’t jump in now. You are too late and you will most likely to get burnt. Don’t follow what the masses are doing. It’s just like stocks – buy when people are selling and sell when people are buying.