Blogging For Money

On Thursday, I attended the Google Analytics Master Class (GAMC) at Hilton Hotel which was held for the first time in Kuala Lumpur. According to the organisers, it was previously held in Singapore in 2009 and when they saw that many Malaysians flew in to Singapore to attend the seminar, they thought that it would be a good idea to have the GAMC in both Kuala Lumpur and Singapore this year. Apparently they didn’t expect the seminar to have such a huge turnout. I, too, along with my friend Malcolm had to wait in a very long queue to enter the hall.

Took a photo of myself, since I was bored waiting for the event to start.

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In this video, Matt Cutts answers a question from a viewer regarding techniques on building backlinks to your site. It is important to note that having original content in your site seems to be a major factor in link-building.

Last week, I found out that Google is holding a Google Analytics Master Class on Actionable Insights at the Hilton Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. In plain English, this means that Google is holding a seminar with tips and insights from their speakers on how to better utilise the Google Analytics tool that is provided by Google.

Well, I registered for a RSVP and today, I received this confirmation letter from Google.

Hi Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi,

Thank you for your rsvp. This is to confirm your seat at the event.

If you are bringing a colleague along, please encourage them to register before Thu, 4 March. The more the merrier! Otherwise you may contact us at +603-2283-4288 or +6016- 336-3057.

Please print this confirmation for registration at the event.

So yes, it looks like I will be going to learn more about Google Analytics. I’ve always wanted to learn how I can effectively utilise it in order to improve my SERPs and traffic to my blog(s). Did you receive a RSVP for the Master Class? Let me know. See you there!

Even Hitler is not spared from the might of the Big G. Watch this hilarious video after Hitler receives the bad news regarding his domain rankings in Google

Lately, I have been getting these weird SEO spammers asking me to contact them if I wish to increase traffic to my site(s). These e-mails sure look fishy, here is one of them that I received today.

Felicia Sams wrote:
We are interested to increase traffic to your website, please get back to us in
order to discuss the possibility in further detail.

Website:
IP: 122.163.119.126

The e-mail came from seo.sales.traffic@gmail.com. Certainly does not seem to come from a reputable SEO company. So I did a search for this Gmail address and I found out that the problem was not new.

According to the site that I visited, several indicators that this e-mail is spam are:

• The communication will normally come completely unsolicted via email or your website form
• The sender usually uses free non-professional email address (e.g. @gmail.com)
• They do not have their own website
• No telephone number (or not a UK number)
• No company name

I did one step further and made an IP lookup trace for the IP I got from that e-mail. Here was the result:

So do not reply to these types of e-mails. They want you to reply, because then they will add your e-mail to their harvest list and later spam you will all sorts of offers.

When I first started my online venture, I did get a lot of flak offline and online. Many people I met were actually skeptical that I would get involved into something which is not really recognised as a (traditional) “job”. Several moronic bloggers (whom I shall not name here) even blatantly chastised me publicly by saying that this is an euphemism for being “jobless”. Of course, what they do not know is that I was not “forced” into starting up my ventures online due to unemployment or anything of the sort. I chose to do what I did because I really wanted to do it. I certainly cannot imagine myself sitting at a desk from 9 AM to 4 PM like an office drone (think Hiro Nakamura of Heroes fame) or take orders from someone who looks down on you just because she thinks you build websites as a “hobby”.

Well, I have proved all the skeptics wrong and I am still doing my online business today, since having started it in mid-2006. I even bought Project Petaling Street in early 2009 with the money I earned from my internet ventures and am currently consolidating it with other services such as my free URL shortener. Here is the latest screenshot of my earnings from PayPal for February 2010, thanks to my online ventures (its not limited to blogging only).

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