Blogging For Money

Amazon has recently announced their Context Links Beta program, very similar to the way Kontera displays their ads. According to their blog:

Context Links are for people looking for an easy way to generate money from the content they write. Bloggers, review sites, and people that have archived pages that are currently not monetized are excellent candidates for Context Links.

I have just placed the code onto some of my blogs but have yet to gauge their effectiveness. So far they have not appeared yet but a demo of how the links work can be seen here and here (dotted underlined links are Context Links). It certainly shows much promise!

So I went ahead and made a copy of my documentation, sealed it in an envelope and posted it to PayPal. Total was RM7.50, inclusive of postage and envelope, courtesy of Pos Malaysia.

I’m still going to get my documentation faxed though, just in case the documentation do not arrive as expected. Probably next week.

Finally after nearly a month of agony, desperation and cybercafe-hopping in order to have a few hours of internet access, TMNet finally restored my home access at long last. What was initially supposed to be “two working days” turned out to be four weeks, but what the heck. All I did was to take the initiative and paid a visit to TMPoint Kajang to complain about the inaction I experienced for my report number 4197850. I made the complaint at around 11 am. TMNet took action and service was restored at around 4pm. That’s less than 12 hours. And certainly much more less than the time (and cost) I spent calling 1-300-88-9515 and harrassing the officials there about my case.

So the lesson of the day is simply this: don’t wait for their call after making your report via their TMNet Streamyx Centre. Lodge your report and then pay a physical visit to your nearest TMPoint. If you don’t do that, they will take things for granted and will be “sleeping on the job”, so to speak. Believe me, I know.

I sent a query via their online contact form asking them whether it is possible to send the documents they are asking for via e-mail. Below is the reply that I received from them. Basically the answer is “no, you have to use a bloody fax machine regardless whether you live in a country with Third World facilities, lousy libraries or otherwise”.

Dear Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi,

Thank you for contacting PayPal with your concern.

I am sorry, we are unable to open file attachments due to security precautions. Please fax your documentation to PayPal. If you do not have access to a fax machine, most copy centers and some libraries will have fax machines that you can utilize for a nominal fee.

In addition, if you have a scanner attached to your computer, you may be able to convert your computer and scanner into a digital fax machine through various shareware and freeware available over the internet. One reference website is www.download.com. Type in “fax” into the search box to locate a number of free fax programs that may be available for your computer.

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Earl-ku of kukujiao.com asked the following question:

how do i fax to US? i would have to gooover the tm shop and apply for international dialling, which i ammnot sure how much thats gonna cost me, only then will iibe able to fax to overseas number …

You don’t have to subscribe to the international dialling package offered by TM. Just go to any TM branch or TM Point and ask them for their fax services, they will charge RM12.90 per page. I went to the TM Point in Kajang and that is what they told me, only thing is that I couldn’t fax my 5 pages documents in the end because they are experiencing a problem with their fax toner. Heh, why does that last line sound so familiar?

I got a bit of a shock today when I logged into my PayPal account. PayPal had changed the status of my account to “limited” and barred me from sending or receiving payments until I have sent them the relevant documents they requested to “verify” my existence. So I would have to send them via fax:

1. Copy of my IC
2. Copy of my driving license
3. Copy of my utility bill
4. Another page containing my name, contact number and address.

Good thing that I have everything in order, phew. Its troublesome but I’ve learned that its best not to make a fuss out of this and simply comply with what they requested from me. I could have sent it to them tonight but I don’t have the “utility bill” with me. So I guess I will fax it first thing tomorrow. I’m not sure how I am going to fax those documents to the United States either. Maybe I can ask those people at TM when I drop by there tomorrow to complain about my Streamyx account.

Why even blog to earn money? Some might ask that question, wondering why on earth would anyone want to earn money from what was originally seen as a leisurely past time. That might be true back in the days when weblogs first came on the internet scene, but the blogging world has certainly moved on since then. Many bloggers do earn some income from their blogs, enough to sustain a living while at the same time pursuing what they enjoy the most: writing and maintaining their blogs. There are also those “purists” (mostly from the lifestyle genre which I personally find distasteful and disgusting) who believe that one should not be earning a single sen from their blogs, that it should remain free and away from any sort of advertising influence. You can usually identify these people, since most of them are actually opinionated enough to state their “stand” against internet marketing or any form of paid blogging on their blogs, to the extent that they are willing to shut down their blog when they are unable to pay for their domain name or hosting space.

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