InvestorBlogger

I’ve been busy these past few days, one of the reasons I don’t post much on this blog. What have I been doing?

Needing Photographs

In the effort of building my own product site (click to see the post about that), I realized that I needed very specific photographs for my site, far more so than I had anticipated.

I had originally thought that I would be able to get by using photos purchased from Istockphoto.com but I didn’t realize that the photos were merely depictions of generic items.

For many of my upcoming review and profile pages, I needed specific products that had been photographed: eg, Columbian Coffee Beans or Instant Coffee Powder or whatever.

It’s okay to use some of the generic pictures available, but if you want to be specific, you just can’t use generic photographs of products: there’s no way you can be sure what is being photographed.

I’m not sure of the legality of using pictures taken from places like Amazon either. Even though I’d be using the pictures to promote Amazon products, I wouldn’t be using them in EXACTLY the way they intended.

While I could use product manufacturer’s pictures without too much of a problem, I guess that part of the problem is that I can’t photograph or portray exactly what I wanted.

So enter the Light Tent

I know it’s not exactly impressive, but I thought I needed to take a first step rather than just sit twisting in the wind! So I did.

The exact instructions are here. I followed them as best I could. But I had to make up the part about the lamps I need. I ended up using 2 x 15W white light CF bulbs in each of the smaller lamps, and a 23W white CF bulb in the top light. There’s also a lot of ambient light from the room lights.

The other part where I had to improvise was the camera: I just used what I had, my Lumix LMC-DX30 which could do small and reasonably close up shots of products. I’m not exactly sure how I will be able to take photos of beans yet. That may require some artistry on my part, esp. if I can’t get a decent close-up.

First sample photographs

When you start taking photographs, it is merely testing the waters: take a look. Any feedback would be appreciated!

This picture isn’t well cropped, but that’s because I cropped it too closely. I know that. What do you think about the sharpness? The color? The background?

I’m making it up as I go along. I do believe the next few shots will be better but the background seems troublingly gray. I’m not sure why yet. The background is why, so perhaps there’s an overcast of shadow on the back.

Having fun!

If you’re interested in following Taiwan’s news, I’ve created a special News page for Taiwan mostly because I can’t bear all the bickering between left and right, blue and green, …

Much of the idiocy is played out in the newspapers (esp. the English press) which are lackeys for whichever political party they support. China Post is largely blue/KMT party; while Taipei Times is green/DPP focused.

So if you are interested in getting news from many sources, check out the link or click on the image to read the latest news. It’s a good read, and you should find the variety of resources interesting and stimulating!

Last year, as people were predicting the end of the world, and property prices started sliding in Taiwan, I got into a discussion with another blogger in Taiwan … it’s a pity because I hadn’t found this website: Taiwan Property Market News & Figures.

If you are interested in the property market, you will find that the prices in Taiwan are relatively cheaper than almost any other developed area in this part of the Far East. It’s astonishing. It’s also astonishing that apartment quality is even now still lacking by comparison with counterparts in HongKong and Singapore.

Oh, and by the way, it’s totally 100% legal for foreigners to purchase land in Taiwan, esp. for business or residences. There are land restrictions on other types of land, though. So don’t let any ill-informed person (aka Taiwan Realtors) tell you otherwise.

I’d suggest that you wager with them: offer to get a legal opinion written in Chinese by a local lawyer stating the situation. The loser pays for the legal cost of getting the letter. See if they bite.

Do pay attention to the facts and figures on the left and right of the main page. It’s easy to overlook, but you would regret that. There’s tons of great numbers in there. Of course, any number quoted here or anywhere is only a guideline. Only familiarity with the local (and I mean superlocal) market will enable you to figure out where the values lie.

I’m in the midst of swapping over my site from my first domain to my new domain, and I’m very happy with how fast things have gone… Some cautionary advice, though.

If you have any serious doubts about your first domain name choice, you should DEFINITELY move earlier. I’m moving about 20 pages and it’s a real hassle. But can you imagine moving 200 pages or more?

Ok here are the tips…

1. Allow plenty of time to reset the pages, since you have to do it all manually. It’s quicker than the original setup, but will still present the occasional problem.
2. Use as few blocks as possible will speed things up no end.
3. Always make sure you have backed up all your data, including a backup of your site (as last seen on the old URL), YOUR MKL, mail, etc. as the entire domain is wiped. COMPLETELY.
4. Using the backup of your first site will help you speedily recreate the entire site.
5. If you want to redirect your old domain, then you will need an extra NameParkIt purchased so that the old domain can be pointed there.
6. If you are within the first month of your original domain setup, traffic from Google will be negligible so disruption won’t really be a problem.
7. Don’t forget to tell Google Via Webmasters Tools that your domain is now changed.
8. Don’t forget to check the links when you’re done. Sometimes links may still be pointing to the old domain.
9. If possible, do page 301 redirects (I may explore that option).

Overall, the nameparkit ($10) and domain change cost ($50) are pretty reasonable considering what needs to be done. And you get a new domain for the primary ($10 saved) and 25 new keyword searches.

Of course, if you lost any unused keyword searches, that’s pretty sad.

In the end, I figured it was all worth it as I’ll be able to snag a hyphenated and unhyphenated domain and point them to my site.

We’ve been running our new banner for a couple of weeks now, and if you look you’ll see that the URL is different for our school banner than our website. Why? It’s in Chinese!

Today’s post looks at whether your site is mobile ready, and how to do it. The mobile web is beginning the growth phase and could be even bigger a phenomenon than the current web, as the number of mobile units out in the market, many of which are mobile internet ready, is huge!

The results are pretty good, too, if you take a look.

Of course, this is fortuitous because it means I can figure out if people are actually seeing the sign in our target area and visiting our site from the URL or not. But the risk is if you are on the street, and you want to check the details before you call, and your site isn’t mobile you’ll likely discourage the visitors because of what they might see.

What do they see when they get there? Well, before they would have seen a busy site in mini-view with lots of places to click, and not suited to the mobile experience at all. But I installed one plugin called WordPress Mobile which …

WordPress Mobile Edition

A mobile/phone/PDA friendly interface for your blog with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.

This is a combination theme and browser checker that delivers a mobile view if one of the user agents matches the list of mobile browsers. With so many mobiles out there, the list of browsers is quite diverse, but the user experience is great.

Once you install the WordPress Mobile Edition, and activate it, it’s pretty smooth. You can test your site at Ready.Mobi to see if it is compatible.

The stats are meaningless without taking a screenshot of the site in mobile view, but that’s a little tricky! Any suggestions how to get a pc to view a mobi.site? Are you a mobi developer? Do you have a mobile site? Do you have a regular site and are you getting it ready for the mobile world?

Would you like to own this ‘thing of beauty’? Isn’t it amazing? Wonder what the gasoline bill is?

After all, how you get about town is as important as getting about town! Right?

Well, I am surprised.

For many companies and individuals worldwide, 2009 was a difficult year. I am surprised that even now my online income has only decreased a little in 2009 vs. 2008. Most of the income came as the result of advertising to my small network of blogs, some from my broker, a little from personal interest.

The grand total for adding up my extra income (not salary) was in fact, $5,386.51. Like always, this is the gross figure, not including expenses, and taxes. My only disappointment is that at this time, I am just not in a position to earn enough on a monthly basis to justify setting up a company or paying myself a decent salary.

I’m slowly getting to my target of $1500 per month, but without additional income streams, it’s difficult to get the most out of my existing streams.

Plans for 2010.

So, in 2010, I’m building a couple of new sites with SBI, to enhance my income stream. It’s my first real experiment with affiliate marketing despite dipping my toes twice this year already with EeeBlogger and TESOLTeachers, neither of which did much business other than pay for their own domains.

I’ve done some rough figures and for my first SBI site, I think it should be able to pay for itself in about 12-18 months because I’m going into a more saturated market, even though my keywords have less competition. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the payouts are a little less, so profits are likely to be less.

However, if I can even reach levels seen on this site or my other main site, that’d be a blessing! Why? I love creating content, but creating static quality content is a whole new field for me. I think, for the time being, I will ease up on the regular blogging to concentrate on creating real niche sites. 2010 should be really interesting!

My online office: I’m going increasingly cloud based as the pile of hard disks on my desk at school is more redundant. In fact, I was looking at my USB key-ring that held (only 4mb of space) and it was bigger than one of my old hard disks from about 10 years ago! The hard disk still works, too. Wonder if the keyring will work in seven years time.

Nowadays, I use…

Google Docs – for straightforward document creation and sharing. I especially like the spreadsheets options, and the fact I can share stuff easily. I use the standard version AND the hosted version with a domain or two of mine.

USB Key or Flash Drives – I use a lot of apps for the USB key, courtesy of PortableApps. There is stuff for most needs there, including Productivity, Internet, Media, and more. Most of the stuff is open source, and even after so many years, there is no sign that Microsoft has created any portable applications at all. Why would they?

EverNote – I’ve experimented a great deal with EverNote, and I really like the features for note creation, and sharing. I also managed to install the software (from inside the main App) on a keyring and use it without any problems. I think the transfer portions even for the paid version are awfully scrooge like, esp. in these days of 10mb of images (and that’s small).

WordPress – I created a couple of private blogs to host the development of my new sites (the Coffee One and another one to come soon). I find it combined with LiveWriter a great way to write notes, posts, stubs, notes, store research, upload photos I want to use, etc.. If anything, I am finding it much more useful overall than EverNote as it makes everything easily accessible.

To create a private blog, simply install one of the Member plugins that restricts access, turn off the publicity, close the registrations, and voila! One secure, private area.

Flickr – Although I don’t post ALL my photos on Flickr, I find it really easy to share the stuff I want, and to post it to my blog or wherever. It’s not free for unlimited usage. But at $24.95pa, it’s a real steal.

Skydrive – I have 25GB of space from MS courtesy of the LiveSpaces Program. I’ve tried to use it but I find the whole idea of uploading a bunch of stuff from a browser pretty clunky, esp. since I’d like to use it for serious cloud storage (not backup!). But the system isn’t fully mature as copying and pasting files or folders doesn’t really work.

So, I am now using DropBox to help with this. It pretty much works as SkyDrive should. The free space is smaller, but you can upgrade to 100GB of space.

Having your own hosting is also part and parcel of this Cloud computing era, and I run a number of sites that reflect my differing interests. No need to brag here about them all, but it definitely helps with the FTP applications, hosting on your personal domains, and much more.;

Lastly, I spend a lot of time listening to Internet Radio in different formats, esp. I like the Radio?Sure software and XMplayer, both of which work as USB apps or can be installed regularly! (In fact, if you use these a lot, simply copy them to your desktop, run them – all faves saved – and delete them when done.

And, I’ll let you into a secret: I’m beginning to like NOT having to install apps and reboot XP (yes, it still happens) each time I want to use them. I can just copy the folder, and it works! It’s a little slower than running an installed app, but it’s a huge timesaver if you’re testing software.

Now, if I could only figure out how to make money in the cloud… then I could travel the world! Anyone?

To multiply small successes is precisely to build one treasure after another. In time one becomes rich without realising how it has come about.

Frederick the Great (1712-1786).

I’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks building a new site for my online business. It’s called Great Coffee Beans, and though it’s still early days, I’ve quite progressed along the track of building this site.

Why is it different? Well, it’s different because it’s my first site to focus on the SBI site building ideas, so it’s going to be a fully featured site with approx. 100 pages about Coffee Beans and making Great Coffee.

I haven’t set traffic or financial targets because it’s too early to really see what will happen.

The whole SBI process has been quite an opener in terms of the required keyword research and detailed article writing. I’ve also taken the unusual step of buying a lot of photographs and touching them up for the site. I’m hoping to mix my own photos in with the commercial ones.

There’s really not much else to say about the site, but I am working hard on refining the Look and feel of the site by adding lots more images to the site. I’ve still to revise two more articles, then I’ll be adding upto 35 more articles over the coming weeks to finalize stage one.

Traffic levels are still low, as I redesign and rewrite the site… but I’m hoping that traffic reaches 300 unique visitors within about three months. Do check it out and let me know what you think of the site!