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.

Will be flying back to Phnom Penh again on 20th March 2010.

It feels good to be back home. Nothing much to complain. Singapore is still the very best (maybe except the weather).

My cafe is finally opened. Well, technically speaking… it’s not a pure cafe anymore. I would prefer to call it an eating house that serve good coffee! LOL. Our cafe serve Hainanese chicken rice, Singapore curry, Japanese curry katsu, pork floss buns, Kaya toasts etc.

I can’t say our chicken rice is “up there” with ChatterBox, but many Singaporeans and Malaysians residing in Phnom Penh commented that our chicken rice is good. Maybe it has been a long time since they tasted authentic Hainanese chicken rice, cos’ basically the so-called chicken rice there suck. LOL.

Things I learnt while doing business – Don’t trust anybody. Not even fellow Singaporeans. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.

Just for your information… the alcohol I consumed in Phnom Penh is more than the alcohol I drank in my whole life in Singapore.

Lack of sleep. Been running here and there to get stuffs and getting things done. And things are especially difficult because my partners and I have no experience in setting up a brick and mortar business and in F&B industry.

A lot of Singaporeans and Malaysians who are in Phnom Penh say we are very “adventurous” and have the “guts”.

Seriously, come to think of it, I think we are. We only visited Cambodia a few times and without in-depth market research, we started a business there.

Forget everything you know about doing business in Singapore, it’s totally different in Cambodia.

I lost my temper many times here.  I seldom lose my temper in Singapore. LOL.

I don’t know whether this cafe and succeed or not. Nevertheless, it’s a good experience and I have fun doing the business set-up process.

People often ask me how do I build my links and there are 101 ways that you can build links. But the ones that I used often are:

1. Article Marketing
2. Directories Submission
3. Social Bookmarking
4. Blog Carnival
5. 3-Way Links

If you try do all the methods above by yourself manually, you will take countless of hours. That’s not a good use of your time. You need to outsource them. Free yourself up! Here are some of the software/services I used personally to outsource my SEO tasks.

Article Marketing

If you submit all the articles to the major article directories, you will take at least 1 hour+ to finish the job. PLEASE use a software to do it. The one I am using is Automatic Article Submitter. It will fill up your Title, Keywords, Article and Author Bio automatically, so you don’t have to copy-paste one by one. 15 min and you are done.

Directories, Social Bookmarking, Blog Carnival

WL Marketing is a SEO submission service company. I found them by chance around 1 year ago and they are a great help to me! Most importantly, their service is very affordable and efficient. For example, a submission to 80 dofollow social bookmarking sites only cost $10. That’s really cheap to me. Try submitting  80 sites yourself. You will take a few hours. I rather pay $10, cos’ my time is worth more than that!

3-Way Links

3-Way Links is a link-building “network” where site A is link to B, B link to C and C link back to A again. So, it’s one-way links and not reciprocal. Once you key in your anchor text link, it will generate 250 links over a period of time. Great for medium to low competition keywords.

Besides that, November and December are traditionally slow months for health sites and my income did drop for this period of time. My all time high income was in October.

And along the way, many “unexpected” things happened as well – such as deciding to set up a brick-and-mortar business in Cambodia. My partners and I made a fast decision and before you know it, we are in Phnom Penh.  For the whole of November, I didn’t manage to focus on my Internet business at all, cos’ I was flying too often. What I am glad is that, my online income was still pouring in even though I did not touch it at all for that month.

Having said all these, it’s NOT meant to be an excuse on why I didn’t achieve my goal. I will strive even harder to make sure I achieve it in 2010. In fact, I set up another 2 new sites here in Phnom Penh!

I will juggle between my cafe and my Internet business!

Right now, as I am using the Internet, it is considered a “luxury item”. I am paying about USD$70 per month for an approx. 384kbps speed. My 3 partners and I shared the costs and we take turns to use the Internet.

When we cooped up in Singapore for too long, we tend to take things for granted. We think that our government is not doing enough, our wages are not high enough, things are too expensive, transport system not good enough etc.

Wait till you come to Cambodia. You thoughts will changed.

Singaporeans like to complain on the slightest issues. In my opinions, we are just too pampered. Our Gen Y generation never face hardships. We are fed with a silver spoon since we were born. We have good families, good education, good living environment… basically good life. The only thing we are worried is not getting a grade A for our examinations.

Please complain less and appreciate more. Singapore is really the BEST.

We took a bus to the Serangoon station and head off to Dover.

It has been quite some time since I board a bus/MRT during the morning-rush peak hours. Even though I am not working now, I still hate it. The crowds are terrible.

People “squeeze” you, you “squeeze” people. It’s packed like sardines.

Once I was on the bus or MRT, I started to observe the expressions on people’s face. What did I see?

Glum. Sleepy. Frown.

Yup. None is smiling. All have the dreaded it-is-time-to-go-to-work face. I understand their feelings. I was once in their shoes as well. Waking up in the early morning and going to work is not exactly the best feeling in life.  If you dislike your job, that’s even worse. Isn’t it?

I am very used to leading my own kind of lifestyle since I quitted my job since May 09. I can’t go back to such 9 to 5 working lifestyle ever again. I hope I don’t!

Anyway I hope my upcoming cafe will run smoothly as well. I do my best and God will do the rest!

The cafe start-up is not progressing smoothly as we wanted.  Well, I expected that to happen anyway. It’s not so easy to start up a brick and mortar business. I don’t want to talk so much about it… wait till it’s finally done then I will shout it out again. LOL.

For now, let me de-bunk the myth of autopilot income from internet marketing. Yes, it is indeed POSSIBLE. I didn’t do anything on my websites for nearly the whole month of November and my income is still pretty consistent.

I didn’t touch my sites because I was mostly away in Cambodia. Internet access is limited and I can’t do any work. Even when I was back, either I am too tired to touch my internet marketing stuffs or I am busy with my new business start-up.

That’s the power of an Internet business. You do the hard work once, and you get to enjoy the fruits of labour.

I guess it all boils down to my drive to succeed in life.

Let me tell you something – I want to be successful in life.  Well, being “successful” is very subjective. For some people, it may be earning their millions, or it may be getting an Olympics gold medal, or scoring As in their exams and achieve a 1st class honours, or even doing social work that bring warmth to people in need etc.

I am a shallow guy… I use wealth as a benchmark to determine how successful I am. LOL.

Cos’ I don’t like the feeling of being poor. When I mean poor, I don’t mean I don’t have a home or go hungry for 7 days without food. It’s in Singapore context and comparing with some of my peers.

I came from a very humble family. I live in a small 3-room flat (I am still living here). My parents don’t have high education. My father used to work as a construction worker and my mother works in a supermarket. Household income is not high.

Don’t talk about having a car. My parents can’t afford. When I was young, I was very envious of friends whose parents have cars. The parents can fetch them from school.

I don’t get the chance to travel overseas for a leisure trip. It’s a luxury for us. Do you know I first fly on a plane ONLY in June 2007? Again I was envy of my friends whose parents can take them for an overseas trip.

When the PC was getting common in 1996, I was hoping my dad can buy one for me. No… they can’t afford. It’s only when my dad strike a $3000 4D in 1998 that I finally got a PC. I still remembered that my PC was delivered to my house on 24th Dec 1998. It was so damn happy that time. LOL.

I don’t have the money to buy the things I want. I seriously don’t like that feeling.

Although I came from a relatively poor family, my parents provided me all the necessary basic needs. I am grateful for their upbringing.

Maybe this is the reason why I want to be rich and successful in life.

Besides that, my school life was not smooth as well. I was last in class out of 42 people during my upper secondary school days. Erm… I seriously don’t know why my results sucks. No matter how hard I study, I can’t get it. LOL.

The worst thing is – the teachers are not motivating. Some of them just like the smarter students. Even if they do encourage, I feel it’s not sincere. It’s like the sake for doing it only.

Onto JC days, my results still suck as ever. I remembered my Economics teacher said to a few of us: You guys have no time already. You are not going to make it. I paraphrase it, but it’s something along that line. How motivating is that!! F**K him.

I practically suck during my high school and junior college days. Low self-esteem. But deep inside me, I was very angry. I wanted to prove to people and those f**k teachers that I can succeed in life even though I am not good academically.

So, basically from my army days onwards, I tried to look for all sorts of opportunities that can make me money. I know my grades in school suck, and I can’t compete with people who are academically-talented.

It’s these kind of small failures in life that make me very determined to pave a way out.

I don’t come from a well-off family and my grades in school are disastrous. I have nothing to lose anymore.

I don’t want people to look down on me. I want to be as good as other people. I want to afford the things I want to buy. I want to provide a good life for my soon-to-be retiring parents. I want to give my future wife and children a comfortable life.

All these above give me the drive to succeed. And I know that by working as an employee, I can never reach my desired income.

Of course, I know for many of the things I tried, some of them may not be as successful as I want them to be. The important thing is I work towards my goals and dreams.

Ok. This blog post may not be coherent because I just write what I feel without much planning.

It’s a business trip. Well, I can consider it as a leisure trip to a certain extent because it’s my first trip to Cambodia and I got to see a lot of stuffs.

My life gonna be a lot more exciting for the next 2 months as I will be running a cafe there with another 2 partners of mine. I am keeping my fingers crossed. It’s just the beginning and there are a lot of things to be done and get the cafe up and and running.

For the past week, I am only connected to the Internet for a few times and all I can do is to check emails. However, I am glad my income is still pretty consistent. Seriously, I did NO work at all on my sites. Right now they are all running on “auto-pilot”.

I believed for the next few weeks I will be even busier and will have less time for my online business. I will see how it goes. I really want to manage both my online and offline business well though.