About Marketing in Asia

Bestblogs.asia came about by accident really. I identified a need for a blog directory for Asian bloggers, then the site transformed into writing about Internet in Asia and has developed. The people below are people who have opinions I respect and read regularly. Many are established in their respective countries in Asia and have great tips for people looking to progress further, I’ve also written about SEO in China.

See I See

By Sam Flemming, who has been involved in Chinapay.com the first online payment platform in China. His site helped brands like Pepsi and Nike and demonstrates how the “Internet Word of Mouth” is impacting and can be used to impact marketing communications, product research and development, reputation monitoring and public relations.

More at seeisee.com/sam.

My Life in China

Written by Stefan, Managing Director and Owner of 3digitalminds Co., Ltd., a China Internet marketing agency for performance marketing and SEO Consulting. He reports about online marketing in China, China SEO and Chinese PPC.

More at my-life-in-china.com.

Motoko’s weblog

By Motoko Hunt, writes about SEO in Asia with mainly a Japanese focus and is a member of SEMPO board of directors. Her search marketing consulting services with her extensive knowledge of Asia and Japanese market have been highly valued and made big impact on some of the world’s popular multi-national brands search marketing campaigns.

More at Motoko’s weblog.

Digital Market Inner Circle

Mainly written by Dr. Mathew McDougall. He brings 18 years of professional experience in the Internet, wireless, new media, and software sectors. He has done business internationally in 12 countries and is a seasoned executive in strategy, international sales and marketing, and general management. Dr. McDougall founded the SinoTech Group of companies in Beijing in 2007.

More at sinotechblog.com.cn.

Conclusion

If there are others that should be on the list, let me know! I was hoping to list http://www.gordonchoi.com/ but his site seems to be down.

Best Blogs Asia.

Famous Indian Bloggers and Affiliates

Amit Agarwal
A professional blogger and personal technology columnist for a national newspaper. He runs the Digital Inspiration site.

Ajith Edassery
A software professional and blogger from Bangalore, India. He runs the popular Dollar Shower site.

Lax
Owns and runs Techzoomin which is a popular web blog and talks about making money in India.

Tushar Agarwal
Probably the best blog on this list as the posts make sense and easy to read. Tushar runs the popular Bloggers Passion site.

Indian Blogging Communities

There is a small list of blogospheres which are communities/directories of Hindi and Bangla blogs. I also have my own directory at Indian Blogs:

• Indiblogger
• Blogvani – Hindi
• Blogbharti
• A4u India

Useful Affiliate Networks in India

From what I understand, PayPal India have stopped transactions to personal accounts – which is a huge thing so having a stable currency online (and offline) would help affiliates. That said, here are some popular and active networks in India:

DGM Asia
I’ve written about DGM in Hong Kong, so taking that in mind they also have clients like ABN Amro, SnapFish, Tata Motors, Tata AIG, Lipton, Makemytrip and Rediff shopping. Join DGM Asia (India).

Clix Galore
Clix Galore have been around for ages and seem to have a lot of country specific sites. One thing I must say is that their sites have an Australian angle to them which doesn’t relate at all to India. Join Clixgalore.

Vcommission
Seems to offer similar programs like DGM Asia, but also gambling offers like 888 and Nielsen which could be worth checking out. Join Vcommission.

SMXchange
Huge list of popular programs like Microsoft, IBN Live, Mac, ICICI Bank, British Council and CricketNext. Join SMXchange.

Affiliate Programs

The following are established and worth joining up with:

• Shaadi – The World’s largest matrimonial agency
• Adsense
• Other Asian Dating programs

Conclusion

I’m no expert on Indian blogging I’m afraid, but there seems to be potential. Depending on the popularity of this article, I may look into this field further and see what else is going on in the local web community.

If there’s more to add to this article, let me know!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Shoe

I’ve written about Shoemoney.com before last year. Since then he’s developed further into the area of Social Media, making money from sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

I think he’s a born entrepreneur and the difference between him and other marketers is that he’s always after the money. Even though he’s rich, he still wants more and more.

From what I remember on his blog, he’s been making money in Social Media generally by:

Using Twitter

Implementing twitter feeds for all his sites, adding subscribers and following everyone (although later he cancelled this option).

This meant he’s got 1000’s of twitter followers who are interested in him and his sites, very specific group of people. Now he makes money through “Sponsored Tweets” which are targetted to his Twitter audience, making money from clickthroughs or just promoting products.

Using Facebook and Myspace (Increase his Shoemoney Account)

Again it’s a similar pattern of gaining a lot of followers and sending them targetted advertising. However, the rules are more strict on these types of sites so I imagine he’s more likely to promote specific articles on his sites to gain more readership.

Finally, he’s advertising on these sites. I’d imagine page impressions/views are very high and since Social Media is a new industry, I’d guess there’s not a lot of competition say compared to Google Adwords.

Shoemoney System

I was surprised to receive an email from Shoe (must have been from a subscriber list he’s got by me placing a comment on his site years ago). It looked a bit spammy to tell the truth, where he’s created a system where anyone can signup and then learn the “secrets” as to how he’s made his money.

The guaranteed income stream from gaining monthly subscribers must be huge and of course, the only guy making money from this is shoe…but I don’t discount what he’s doing. It offers:

• More than 100 hours of premium full-length step-by-step training videos, showing you my screen, holding nothing back.
• New video released every 3 days. Progress tracker and video library built-in to the member’s back-office.
• In-depth Interviews with the people at Google, Facebook, SponsoredTweets and all major affiliate networks, where they share their tips for success
• ShoeMoney Tools and third-party tools, all hand-picked by me, to help you grow your online empire.
• Niche Ideas, Top converting Keywords, Banners and ads I’ve used over the years.
• Podcasts and mp3 files of every single talk, presentation and interview I ever gave.

Join the Shoemoney System

• Signup to the Shoemoney System

Conclusion

The thing is with him is that everything’s calculated. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a 5 year plan laid out on how much money he can make and will probably retire in a few years. He looks like an “average Joe”, well an average American Joe but take away the scruffy appearance and casual attitude is a hard nosed marketer and has become very succesful in what he does!

Best Blogs Asia.

Making Money

Before I go further, I want to point out the obvious that this guy is making money by telling you how to make money from the net! I guess someone has to start somewhere and most of the famous IM’s do this anyway. I broke down why he is famous as:

Sales Patter

The way Carl writes and promotes himself would always mean people would take interest. It’s easy to promote a product, anyone can do this. But it’s the way he writes about something, it’s like a story which could contain: personal past experience, not holding back on whether something is good or not and finally giving a conclusion in easy to read sentences…this is the sign of a master seller and Carl has already learn it at this young age.

Self Promotion

I noticed he displays all the positive feedback from other popular marketers on his blog as well as photos of his success. This is something everyone should do, perhaps you know you’re a good marketer…but why not let other people know also!

Age Issue

His popularity came from his age. I guess it’s a case of “if he can do it, so can I”. I’m wondering if an Old Aged blogger would get the same amount of publicity, perhaps – perhaps not.

Location

Problem his location would attract attention too. The Philippines is quite a poor country, so a guy making a fortune from this country would stand out. Perhaps a little like Sabahan who makes money from the jungles of Borneo, Malaysia!

Other Money Making Sites

I checked out his other sites which focus on testimonials, email signup boxes, online signatures, reds and black colours and big lettering to make certain phrases stand out.

All which creates a great looking landing page which then secures a potential buyer’s details…which then = money!

Examples of his Money Making Sites

• http://www.directresponsetemplates.com/
• http://www.ultimatebloggingtheme.com/

Conclusion

Carl doesn’t really focus on Asian Marketing, but with the power of the internet your location doesn’t really matter…you can make money anywhere. I didn’t see anything on his site as to how much he earns, but as a reader we get an “impression” that he’s making a lot of money on the net. Carl is well known in the internet marketing circle and has a great future ahead of him, regardless of his location or age!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Shaolin Tiger

The Shaolin Tiger site is run by Gareth, an expat based in Malaysia who writes funny observations combined with photos. The site is easy to read and follows a similar style to another Malaysian blogger – Kenny Sia.

He also owns and runs http://www.darknet.org.uk and http://www.shutterasia.com, whilst also getting promotion to his site from local magazines and TV appearances.

All photos owned by Shaolintiger.com.

Use of Nuffnang and Advertorials

I see he uses Text Link Ads to make revenue (oh no!). However, one important aspect that made me want to write about his site is that Gareth has sponsored paid posts by Nuffnang (another oh no!).

Potential clients contact him, he refers them to Nuffnang and if accepted Gareth makes a custom advert post, examples:

• Wrigley’s Extra Professional Mints
• Celebrate Like A Champion With Smirnoff!
• Heineken – UEFA Champions League – Be Prepared!

Advert Integration

Not sure on why there’s a lot of focus on Alcohol adverts, but this is an excellent way to make money but also keep readers on the site since the advert posts don’t look like adverts and blend it with the site. I also like the way he’s disclosed they are adverts, unlike other bloggers. It’s also interesting that there’s a considered ruling at the moment in the US that bloggers should disclose paid posts (which they should do anyway).

Conclusion

I always heard bad things about Nuffnang, but this site seems to be working well in partnership with the Malaysian/Singapore based Affiliate Network. Perhaps there are big things going on with Nuffnang after all!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Randall and Big White Guy

Bigwhiteguy started many years ago and Randall van der Woning has been posting to the site constantly,

Randall is a HK expat commenting on social issues relating to Hong Kong and also documents HK life through his photos.

I think by writing on his popular site, he’s led to different avenues such as local magazines and photography classes which wouldn’t have been available to him if he didn’t create the site and update it.

Lessons to Learn

The thing I’d take most from his site is that he seems to enjoy writing blog/diary entries. They reflect his mood, they are interesting and funny too. If we as Internet Publishers take a step back from concentrating on adverts and making money online we’d realise that content is always the number 1 factor in getting visitors to your site!

I can see that Randall hasn’t really monetised the site, perhaps would be too distracting from the writing – although I think the site at least pays for itself per month with paid adverts and a Personals section for dating.

Conclusion

I contacted Randall a while back also, having advertised on his site and he gave me CSS tips a long time ago. I feel his site is friendly, the inability to comment on the posts can be frustrating at time…but it’s his personal site and doesn’t follow the normal convention of other blogs.

My feeling to showcase this site is to give an example of a guy who is dedicated to writing whether it’s profitable or not…money and fame do come later!

Best Blogs Asia.

Jack Ma

Jack Ma used to be an English teacher and tour guide for Hangzhou. He founded Alibaba in 1998 with $60,000 in capital. The company, owned for large part by Yahoo went public in 2007. Alibaba Group also operates Taobao.com, a consumer e-commerce portal similar to Ebay; AliPay, an online payment system; and AliSoft, which makes business management software.

Ding Lei

Ding Lei founded NetEase and became the richest individual in Chinese mainland in the year of 2003. Netease is a Chinese internet company that operates 163.com, a popular web portal which received over 546 million page views in June of 2005. The company has grown rapidly since its founding in June 1997, thanks in part to its investment in search engine technology and massively multiplayer online gaming.

Ma Huateng

Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) has spent his entire career in computing. He joined Runxun Communications Development Co. Ltd. in 1993. He later founded Tencent, the company behinds China’s most used chat client QQ. Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. In 1999. Revenues up 85% in first half 2008 thanks to boost in Internet advertising ahead of Olympics and popularity of such online games as Dungeon, qq Dancer and Cross Fire.

Shi Yuzhu

In 2007, Shi Yuzhu became a billionaire in US dollars. Giant Interactive develops massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, played by tens of thousands of players through networked game servers.

Robin Li

Robin Li is the founder of Baidu.com, the leading Chinese-language Internet search provider, that looks remarkably similar to Google.com. Interestigly enough, the founder represents more net value then Eric Schmit, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page combined!

Conclusion

Looking at these rich people, makes you realise none of these guy’s activities were ground breaking or original. You can look at other trends in other countries, copy them and hope to succeed in your niche. The difficulty is persistence, contacts and determination which is what all these entrepreneurs have in common.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Shi Yuzhu

Shi has an engineering background, was an inventor and created software and later setup his Giant Group company. Bankruptcy came about from large investments in a company building from Zhuhai to Shenzhen. He then made his money back from making healthcare products and creating China’s third-largest online games company, Zhengtu.

Shi was ranked no. 24 with a net worth of 16.75 billion Chinese Yuan (approximately US$2.4 billion).

About Giant Interactive Group

Giant Interactive are one of China’s leading online game developers and operators in terms of revenues, focusing on massively multiplayer online role playing games (“MMORPG”) for personal computers. The Chinese online role-playing game developer caters to the masses, creating massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, played by tens of thousands of players through networked game servers. Its first internally developed game, ZT Online, was launched in 2006. The company has more than 140 game developers, and its prepaid game cards and game points are sold in more than 116,000 retail locations, such as bookstores, Internet cafes, and software stores.

Giant also co-operates with Alipay run by Alibaba, one of China’s biggest independent third-party Internet payment platforms to enhance their online payment system.

Giant also own a percentage of Chinese online social networking site 51.com.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Leon Ho

Leon’s background is in IT, HR and Management and has worked at Red Hat. These skills led him to create his own company Stepcase, which acts as an umbrella for both (Stepcase) Lifehack and Stepcase Apps. Leon was also featured in Business Week’s Top Young Asian Entrepreneurs.

I could have profiled anyone working in Web2.0 who happens to be based in HK/China. But with the Asian economy growing rapidly especially in China, investors are tuning to the energy and innovation of the Asian market and especially to the generation of young, tech- and business-savvy Asians (who also set long term goals)…such as Leon.

Lifehack

Lifehack is the sort of site I wished I designed. Founded in 2005 it’s a blog on productivity and personal development, which became #40 most popular blog in the world. I’m always searching for answers to questions, even exact deep search on Google doesn’t work most of the time. I personally can’t stay with one subject at one time, so a site like this has many articles on varied subjects.

I think there’s many ways someone could copy the idea of Lifehack and be successful. Just search for answers to questions on Search Engines, if they don’t appear or you feel you could do a better job in answering questions…then create an article about it. I think the viral impact of your article, as well as getting it searched and indexed means you can get instant popularity. The problem being is that you’re in competition with huge site’s like Lifehack who publish daily and have a huge amount of authors to deliver fresh content!

An example of a recent interview explains this:
” Why did you start up Lifehack.org, and what is the secret to your blog’s success?

I like to find and read content related to productivity and lifehacks. I usually spend one hour daily reading books and articles on the Internet. I think if I properly use time to find good content, those pointers will save people time as well. So that’s how lifehack.org was born – with a motivation of sharing good content and pointers. Secret? I probably don’t have one to its current status, but I do think constantly publishing good content daily is a major factor to the blog’s growth. As long as I remember, lifehack.org has at least one post every weekday since it was started two years ago.”

Stepcase

Stepcase is the parent company of Lifehack and is a productivity solution company; Stepcase’s Lifehack.org is a blog that delivers content for people who seek improvements in their everyday life; and Stepcase Apps, which is in development, is an online software platform for helping people further on their organization.

Conclusion

Looking at the amount of articles he wrote for Lifehack, it seems from 2006 onwards he was writing one or two articles a day! This amount of fresh content, with titles such as ” 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips” to ” How to be Interesting” would always attract attention and led to a large number of visitors and referrals.

Revenue is earnt from advertising on the site and Google Adsense, so perhaps there is potential to earn more with sponsored posts or using other affiliate related programs. However, I feel the site wasn’t made just to make a profit but to share valuable information to it’s readers…which isn’t a bad thing. As for Asian specific adverts, there are none. I guess it doesn’t matter where you are based since readers come from all over the world…

Best Blogs Asia.

Vladimir Prelovac

Vladimir Prelovac is a well known Wordpress plugin developer and SEO expert. I kept in touch with him on a few occasions as our paths crossed on a SEO project. I enjoy reading his commentary on what it takes to be involved in the Web Industry.

Scott Jones

Scott Jones became famous for winning the SEO V7N competition and later as a successful full time domainer and site owner based in Scotland. He’s posts are interesting and seems keen to answer any questions posed at him and his work.

Stuart Keown

Stuart is known for running Earnersblog, a sort of underground site which gives valuable tips on subjects like Blackhat, link building and promotion. Extremely useful but rarely updated.

Joost de Valk

Yoast is well known internationally for his conferences, wordpress plugins and blog. I check on his site now and again and if you’ve ever wanted to check out how a site should be designed, look at the source code of his sites!

Patrick Altoft

Blogstorm isn’t an easy name to remember, so I don’t regularly check Patrick’s blog. However, I find the indepth posts very useful, well managed and easy to read to is a site you should regularly check.

Other Inspiration

I’ve also created other posts on people who inspire me for particular reasons such as:

• Yongfook
• Kieron Donoghue
• Shoemoney
• John Chow…

Best Blogs Asia.

About Alibaba.com

The site conjures up thoughts of bazaars in Iran/Iraq or even the Disney film “Aladdin” but in short the website is publicly traded company in the business-to-business e-commerce marketplace. I first came across them when I saw their adverts on top of Hong Kong taxis and on tv, their logo is memorable also.

Alibaba operates two key online B2B marketplaces, an International Marketplace and a China Marketplace. The company’s English-language International Marketplace serves to bring together international importers and largely China-based suppliers by offering online export marketing services. The China Marketplace (www.alibaba.com.cn) is focused on facilitating domestic B2B trade within China.

There are more than 35 million registered users, as well as 6000+ employees working for Alibaba, mainly based in China. Also the site works in conjunction with Yahoo China in a joint venture.

Other Companies

There are other companies owned such as:

• Taobao.com – online retail marketplace
• Alipay – third-party online payment platform
• Alisoft – Internet-based business management solutions
• Yahoo! Koubei – Chinese regionalized classified listing website

Using Alibaba and the Impact on eBay

Alibaba is a huge site and does a good job in displaying company products, specific regions and displaying seller details. The problem I see is “trust”. The site is aimed at local Chinese businesses selling abroad so the foreign buyer has to have faith in the seller as well as deal with the logistics of purchasing from abroad.

The 2nd problem is using the online payment system supplied by Alibaba. It’s called Alipay and whilst it does work, it doesn’t have the strength or reputation of Paypal…it’s still early days yet. It works in China because relatively few Chinese have credit cards, so e-commerce companies have long struggled to find a way for customers to make payments for online transactions. With Alipay, Ma has come up with a simple solution: Buyers use Alipay to deposit money in a bank account; Alipay keeps the money in escrow; and then, after receiving notice that the buyer has received the purchase, releases the funds to the vendor.

Jack Ma Profile

Jack Ma is known for investing in companies and could even make a bid for Paypal or eBay in the future, but it’s current TaoBao auction site is huge and dominates the Chinese Person to Person selling market.

I read his background with interest. He had no experience of technology, was previously an interpreter and teacher but he found that as search was taking off in the Western world there was a gap in the Chinese market and raised funds with the help of friends and later Goldman Sachs and Softbank.

Funds were raised by charging for China exporters to meet U.S. buyers online for example companies that pay $2,900 a year to become “Gold Suppliers,” can, for instance, post an unlimited number of products online, offer virtual tours to would-be buyers, and (to reassure potential trading partners) receive vetting by a credit reporting agency. In 2007, Alibaba raised $1.5 billion in an initial public offering in Hong Kong. Yahoo owns 39% of Alibaba.

Jack will take the site further by offering localised versions to other countries around the world and expect to tap into these markets soon, helped along with $30 million spend in marketing. The vision of Alibaba is huge and things are looking up!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Kieron Donoghue

Kieron’s focus on 80% PPC and 20% SEO on a wide range of sites in all specialist niches. The main theme of his domains is single keyworded .uk based, which was a smart move to make many years ago since most domain owners focused on the .com addresses. He spends huge amounts on his PPC campaigns and has a great portfolio of domains.

Domains Owned

This is a selection of his domains:

• UK Offer – An Offer/Voucher site
• Here – A personal blog
• eToys – Was a popular company site years ago, now showcases online toys
• Poker – A guide to playing poker
• Creditcard – Purchasing credit cards online
• Bingo – Guide to playing bingo
• Sharemyplaylists -Spotify Music

Income Earners

• Affiliate Window
• Market Ace
• Double Click UK
• Buy.at
• Affiliate Marketing UK
• Trade Doubler
• Sponsorship – Deals with Specialist Companies (BT etc.,)

Famous Bank Statement

Driving Traffic

It’s interesting to read that he prefers to drive traffic directly to a Merchants offer page rather than a personal landing page, as it may give a greater rate of return. I would guess on his niche sites he drives traffic to specialist pages by using Adwords/Yahoo/Overture and since he owns single keyworded/targeted domains, he ranks very high in Google UK and gets organic traffic.

I also see he’s using Twitter as a means of promoting himself and his latest ventures, which is a smart move.

Conclusion

Kieron Donoghue’s specialist area is UK domains, which is an emerging market just behind the States and Korea. It took great foresight to purchase these single keyworded domains and their value has only increased since then. His latest project is sharemyplaylists which developed from a Spotify music hobby and is now being promoted through magazines and Twitter.

To get to Kieron’s “level” you need to own quality domains, pursue PPC avenues and SEO and promote and make contacts. Then perhaps you can stay home to work and snack on Kit Kats .

Best Blogs Asia.

How to become Popular on Twitter?

I know there’s a trick where you follow as many people as possible and preferably using a sexy photo, hoping that they’d follow you back. Then the people who don’t follow you, you remove and then find someone else…and so on. This is slightly flawed: The users following you back have the same mindset as you – there’s no benefit, it takes a lot of hard work. The real value is to have people follow you who like your work, have similar interests as you and perhaps could be benefitial to you in the future.

China

China is huge for social media, so I expected more people to be using Twitter…

Lonnie Hodge

I remember Lonnie from a while back as he was the first person to buy an advert on this site years ago! He writes about China life and his One Man Bandwidth site talks about the past and the present China.

Shanghaiist

Shanghaiist is another blog I’ve been following over the years, glad to see they are popular too. The Shanghaiist website writes about what’s going on in China.

Hong Kong

From my experience Hong Kong isn’t that well-known to find Web Entrepreneurs who make a full-time living from their earnings, compared to other Asian countries such as Singapore or Malaysia.

Stanley Tang

Stanley posts about school and exams (I guess you would if you’re a 16 year old!) and owns sites like University Kid and made money from selling paperback and eBooks online, which detail how to get rich.

John Ridgeway

John hasn’t written many posts, but the posts he made are quite techy but useful. He’s the owner of Use Joomla which provides tips on maximising the most out of the CMS application and SEO information.

Japan

ilovetypography

Ilovetypography tweets about fonts whilst the ilovetypography site isn’t much different.

Neil Duckett

Neil writes about beer and the weather, whilst his Neil Duckett site showcases beautiful women and life in Japan.

Malaysia

Malaysia is popular for blogging and social networking.

Azham Zanal

Azham writes about hosting and his Wordpress CMS site talks about Blogging in general.

Atniz

Atniz is a stay at home mom/blogger (notice a trend here!) who writes about social media and her site Atniz talks about Google SEO indepth.

Philippines

The Philippines is the only Asian country (yet) I haven’t looked into detail regarding Affiliate marketing and making money online.

Manuel Viloria

Manuel talks about general internet and techny happenings, also runs the Viloria Site which shows you how to make money in the Philippines.

Pinay Mommy

Pinay Mommy write about everyday stuff and baby talk, whilst her Pinay Mommy Online blog
reminds me a lot about Singapore Blogger, Lilian Chan!

Singapore

I was right to expect Social Media would be huge in Singapore!

Xavier Lur

Xavier is a 15 year old blogger who writes about what kids like at his age, his site Techxav talks about the same sort of topics, perhaps more focused on the Asian Blogging Industry.

The Blogger Mom

Blogger Mom writes about all things blog related, her site The Blogger Mom mentions ways of making money online and SEO techniques.

Conclusion

I feel this post is an eye-opener for me too, since at least with Twitter I get an idea of who is popular and check out that person’s profile. I’m still updating my Famous People in Asia list (link) so perhaps in the future I may investigate one or two of these web entrepreneurs in detail! Note: If you add your URL to Twitter, make sure the site it’s linking to is still working!

Best Blogs Asia.

Criteria and Why Influential?

The selection process was based on “online criteria” such as Google/Yahoo/MSN backlinks, Alexa ranking and being referred to in other Blogger’s posts. I was also looking for people who blog full time and make a high income from their sites.

Previous popular blog lists have been based around technorati etc.,. Since Technorati is blocked in countries like China, it can’t give a fair result as to where visits are coming from. The best way of comparing would be to look at each site’s Google Analytic stats, but I seriously doubt bloggers would give me that information!

About the Judge

My name is Giles Dawe and my background is that I’ve ran (now an ex-owner) “Best Blogs Asia“, the biggest directory of Asian Blog links since 2003 where users vote for their favourite blogs. I’m also a blogger living in Asia and web producer, so I know the reasons how and why a site is popular.

Malaysian Blog List

Whenever I’ve made searches in the past for “Best Malaysian Blogs” I’ve always come across Political blogs, Food blogs, technology or Celebrity sites. I’m looking for bloggers who have something to say, preferably about life in Malaysia and about themselves.

Kenny Sia

Kenny Sia is a funny guy.

He blogs about himself and his travels, making each post interesting and most have photos. Each entry gets at least 50+ comments so means he’s established himself with repeat visitors and has a huge amount traffic driven to his site.

Why is he influential?

He’s been on tv, blogs about everyday life, makes substantial amounts of money from his blog whilst not pushing for the hard sell.

Liew CF

Liew CF is a techy blogger who promotes all things techy and internet related.

Why is he influential?

Whilst there may be other Malaysian bloggers who can earn more than Liew CF by discussing tech/make money online, from reading his blog it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to make you click on any affiliate links or anything else which can make him richer.

He just gives useful advice and has got very rich from his trusted readership.

Hot Screensaver

Hot Screensaver is a blogger who talks about food, fashion and everyday life in Malaysia.

Why is he influential?

He has large numbers of visitors to his site, perhaps monetising on visitors who search the site looking for “hot chicks” or latest fashion tips.

The location and colouring of his Adsense adverts must bring him substantial amounts of income, whilst the different types of postings in different niches must bring different types of visitors to his site.

5xmom

5xmom is run by Lilian Chan, a full time blogger who also looks after her family.

Her posts attract a lot of debates on a wide range of subjects.

Why is she influential?

If there was an award for hardest working blogger, than 5xmom would probably win it.

She blogs on multiple sites with different niches, consistently and makes a steady stream of revenue.

Sabahan

Sabahan is a Borneo based blogger, who blogs and sells his own affiliate products online.

Why is he influential?

He discloses how much income he makes, which programs he uses and whether they were effective or not.

This form of honesty is reflected by his users interest, whilst their comments on posts are always replied to by Sabahan.

Malaysian Blogger Chart

Notable Mentions

It’s always nice to see the top bloggers, then people always link to them and they get more popular. But what about other popular bloggers?

• Shaolin Tiger
• Jeff Ooi (Screenshots)
• SP Blogger
• Zeo
• Sapiens Bryan
• Raymond CC
• Sixth Seal
• Sweat Lee
• Gobala Krishnan

Other Malaysian Bloggers are at in the Directory.

How do they all make money?

This is the million dollar question, but it’s a combination of having the right amount of visitors (Malaysia, Singapore and US mostly) who are targeted at the products they are selling:

• Google Adsense
• Nuffnang
• Advertlets

Other ways to make Money

• Direct Advert Selling
• Malaysian Dating Affiliate Program – Sign up
• Adbrite – Sign up
• Play Asia – Sign up

Conclusion

There are always new bloggers coming about on the scene and the list would be ever changing. This isn’t a definitive guide, but should be used as indication of who is out there in this particular country. If there is someone who is missing from this list, let me know!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Sabahan

Sabahan is a term for the people that live in the rainforests of Borneo. He’s also a software developer and PPC expert, so not all revenues come from his blog.

Income Earners

Affiliate income makes up a portion of his main income, whilst the rest comes from selling his own products online.

• Google Adsense
• Kontera
• Direct Ad Selling (125×125 pixel ads, Direct Links)
• Maxbounty
• Commission Junction
• Text-Link-Ads

Driving Traffic

A paid review post from John Chow in 2007 must of brought a lot of traffic to his sites. Contests like “Free Blog Hosting for life” must of brought in visitors too as well as posts like “10 most useful Wordpress plugins”, “Swiss Mutual Fund Scam” and “50 most influential blogs in Malaysia”.

His postings aren’t prolific which leads me to believe he gets a lot of search engine traffic for previous keyworded posts, Digg backlinks, delicious bookmarks and links from a previous link exchange programme and other bloggers.

Conclusion

Whilst his postings aren’t regular, I think for the niche area of “Malaysian Blogging” his site is a must read. His posts are targetted towards bloggers in Malaysia (although most of his visitors come from the States and India!), making money and developing your blog.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Lilian Chan

From finding information about her, she’s a full time blogger and runs a series of niche websites from religion to berevement to food to blogging. It seems she likes to complain about the injustices about daily life and the complaining reminds me a bit of Big White Guy, combined with the brutual honesty of Shoemoney. However by debating what’s going on, it attracts more comments and therefore more visitors come to her sites. God also plays a big part in her blogs.

All photos are copyright of Lilian Chan.

Income Earners

Previous income came from Payperpost, LinkXL, Reviewme, Textlinkads etc., but just as I realised by using these types of sites, they can suck your link juice and ultimately effect your page rank. Lilian is currently using the following on her sites:

• Paid reviews
• Selling links on old posts
• Nuffnang
• Hosting Referals
• Infolinks
• Google Adsense

Driving Traffic

She has a long blog link list, which I guess is a reciprical way of gaining traffic. A lot of her links are noFollow, which helps to keep the link juice on her site. On 5xmom she writes about practical ways of developing a blog, which again can rank her high on search engines for particular key phrases and any affiliate programs she’s promoting will be passed on to her users.

50%+ of her traffic is from Malaysia and she recently got a traffic surge due to the recent Malaysian election and the Edison Chen scandal, so her targetted keywords must rank her sites quite high.

Conclusion

The number of niche sites which are all blog related help to diversify her income. She exchanges links with other bloggers which helps her backlinks, as well as constantly writing on her 12+ blogs helps to achieve a steady stream of internet revenue.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Hot Screensaver

Blog discussion ranges from fashion, technology, Malaysia life, cars and food. There’s no real niche he explores in detail, but the wide range of subjects may mean he’s catering for a wider audience which can explain the popularity of the site.

Popularity could come from the website name “hot screensaver”, the popularity of searching for screensavers and free desktop wallpapers is huge so I’d expect he gets a lot of traffic from these keywords. The site name also comes from a popular and now defunct show called The Screensavers, so again he gets traffic from these types of searches.

All photos are from www.hot-screensaver.com.

Income Earners

Example of a Google Cheque

The main source of income seems to be from Google Adsense. This cheque was in 2008, but gives an example of earnings.

Driving Traffic

The site gets about 35k-40k unique visitors per day and there’s a number of ways he’s driven to his site. Traffic/backlinks coming from an old wordpress blog with a redirect to the new site, blogmalaysia.com which publishes new posts, funny image posts in Digg as well as making a large number of comment posts on other blogs.

One clever way he got traffic and reviews of his blog was from a post called Review my blog and get US$10.

By inviting people to write about his blog, it meant he got more backlinks and by also offering money in exchange other people wrote about what he was doing and it went viral.

The posts themselves are quite short, but nearly contain photos which makes them easy to read or scan quickly.

Also the fact that most photos contain pictures of beautiful women can’t do much harm to the readership of his site too and this is reflected by the 3,500 images in Google linking to his site.

Conclusion

The way he’s posted images is smart. He has so many photos of women on the site, it gets interest from users. The images are also ranked highly in Google’s directory and many of them are watermarked with his site’s url, so should bring in more traffic. He’s also showcasing his high Alexa figure, feedburner subscription box and each one of his posts is fun and invites comments from his users.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Xia Xue

Her English name is originally Wendy Chang, a blogger based in Singapore. The site seems to be her outlet to rant about things going on her life, talk about relationships, new technology and of course, herself.

Her blog is her promotional outlet which has led her gain revenue, sponsorship, column writing and even a Tv show!

Her popularity could stem from that she’s an attractive woman, promotes all things makeup related and is very girly (hence the pink colours).

All photos are from www.xiaxue.blogspot.com.

Income Earners

Sponsorship/Promotion

• Local Brand T-shirts
• Pixel Ad Space
• Phlook Photos
• Munky Superstar (Acting, Voices etc.,)
• Clicknetwork TV

Other Advertising

• Direct advertising
• Nuffnang
• Guide to Life promotion

Nuffnang Cheque

Driving Traffic

There’s a lot of things going on with the site. It contains a lot of text, a lot of images and bright colours. The actual content is humorous and very frank, which make me think her popularity comes from regular readers.

She also links to herself from other Blogspot accounts, has a Dmoz listing, links from other bloggers (strongest being Zucket and Kenny Sia), Wikipedia and the Asian Weblog Awards 2005. Surprisingly Google Images account for 10% of her referrals.

Conclusion

She’s a persistent blogger, who writes long detailed posts on what’s going on with her personal life. People know what to expect from her posts, she’s been promoted in different media outlets and is successfully marketing herself and making money from it. For any bloggers who are starting out and like to write about their lives, I’d recommend checking her out for inspiration. I guess this is a prime example, if you blog enough…the money will come!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Yun Ye

He was a programmer and used custom software to buy domains in the 1990’s to early 2000s’. He and his company, Ultimate Search Inc managed to get the best domains by employing a system of “Drop Catching” which involves buying up sites which people gave up on or forgot to pay the fees on (Something which sites like Pool and Snapnames are doing today). He bought single keyworded domains, typos to random worded domains.

At the beginning he was making money from buying and selling domains, until paid searches and domain parking was introduced which is a system where an advertiser pays only when someone clicks on an advert on your site. He then later sold his portfolio to Marchex.

About Marchex

Marchex has developed from a series of investors to a local search company. They bought the domains, linked them up with advertisers who support local information services, Yelp and Localese sites to match relevant data to their domains.

What sites did he own?

Yun Ye and his practices were notabily well hidden. He operated under the site of noname.com and owned sites such as:

childabuse.org, traditions.com, Beijing.com, cuisine.com, MiamiMotels.com, DetroitResorts.com, oscarnet.com…

How to make money from Domains?

I touched on this at the Most Expensive Domains, but there is a prestige in owning a single keyworded preferably dot.com domain. The secret of how they make money is from type-in traffic, using the example of:

“Looking to buy candy? Type in Candy.com, a page filled with links to candy-related products comes up. Click on one of the ads and the advertiser pays Google, which in turn sends a share to the Candy.com owner.”

There’s also domain parking facilities such as Sedo, which don’t require any web site design at all – just point the domain to their servers and wait for the payments.

Conclusion

He later sold his domain portfolio to Marchex, who paid $164 million back in 2005. The reason why he sold his portfolio could have been due to the pressure he faced from companies/individuals who felt he was “cyber-squatting” names. He’s now become a recluse, but is probably still based in Vancover, Canada or in Hong Kong.

Reading about him makes me want to jump on the bandwagon also, although my feeling is most of the unique keyworded domains have already been snapped up, there is potential for buying mis-spelt names and country specific names also.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Shoemoney

His most famous posts are about when he used to be fat and when he failed at most things he participated in. Many of his followers can relate to him which in turn has boosted his traffic.

He definitely speaks his mind on all range of issues, which in terms sparks debates and gives him and his site more promotion. He states he’s not an SEO specialist and looking at the HTML of his pages, I can see why! His way of receiving traffic is to debate, talk about certain upcoming projects in the web industry, post photos of himself and his followers…and he’s constantly doing this everyday!

Income Earners

He’s definitely a guy who likes to promote himself and anything he’s involved in and makes money, the following ways:

• Conference talks about Blogging
• Referal links in posts
• Branded tshirts
• Sponsored advertising on his Sites
• Sponsored Product Placements
• Shoemoney SEO Tools
• Google Adsense (Upgraded account)

That Cheque from Google

There’s a famous photo of Schoemaker holding a Google Adsense cheque many years ago. This was the time affiliate marketing was taking off and no one really knew how much they could make. This photo changed that, especially since it was only a slight portion of how much he made during the year and has gone on to make much money since with other affiliate programs. I’m sure anyone who has seen the cheque photo below would wonder: How did he do it? How can I do it!

Other Shoemoney Sites

His other sites are just as profitable and have focused on certain niches.

AuctionAds
This was a specialist site which depended on eBay for live auctions. It was a clever site which displayed listings more clearly than eBay and was later sold on.

Nextpimp
This is an interesting site, since it looks very basic. How it has a huge following from users who upload and download ringtones for free. This site was launched many years ago during the height of “Free Ringtones” and made a lot of money from ringtone related adverts. I did some quick research and found the popularity of the website was attributed to two main causes 1)The free ringtone convertor application 2)A lawsuit brought on by Nextel.

Fighters
This is a “one to watch” site which showcases fights and MMA fighters. He’s already placed Adsense adverts on the site and has also sponsored fighting events.

Conclusion

So what can we learn from him? Well, Jeremy always writes that to make money from blogging, he talks about himself and what he’s upto. I think people try to hard to copy what he does and it doesn’t work. The niche topic of ringtones is oversaturated, eBay is becoming more established in more countries and new “Make money online” blogs are popping up everyday.

By finding your own niche and consistantly writing about it, making contacts by developing your site, you will become estaliblished in your own right.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Kenny Sia

It’s funny how his most popular sections on the site would be “Thoughts and Musings” as well as “Life Documentary”…although would of liked to have seen more tips on “Understanding Women” haha, since it’s a complex subject! He’s been involved in offline activities such as the Mister Potato TV commercial ad too.

One thing I’m surprised about his site, is that he’s still using Movabletype. It’s something most blog owners used “back in the day” but then we later transferred to Wordpress because of ease of use (who uses the Cgi-bin in MT anyway!) and the number of available plugins make WP better.

Kenny and Nuffnang

He promotes Nuffnang adverts on his site, which is a main source of revenue but is also involved in offline promotion, giving talks on how to use Nuffnang and making money from it. I see he uses their Polls, although unsure how he can make money from that. Nuffnang is exclusively Singaporean and Malaysian targetted.

Example of a Nuffnang check

This cheque was from 2007, but imagine he’s making much more (12k RM)

Income Earners

As mentioned, he uses Nuffnang instead of Advertlets but also uses the following to make revenue:

• Adbrite (Sign up here)
• Google Adsense
• Advertorials in Posts

Driving Traffic

Luckily for me I didn’t have to research too hard as to where his traffic is coming from as he’s got a SiteMeter app installed, which is useful for potential advertisers. He gets around 15k visits per day and has popular applications like the “Benglish Translator”.

Conclusion

The honesty and down to earth writing can be identified by his readers, which is probably why he has a huge readership. The layout of the blog is simple, contrasted with (watermarked) photos in nearly every post, it makes reading easier.

This is one of those sites where you look forward to his activities and understanding that his blog “niche” is talking about himself, say compared to Yongfook (Web Tech news) or LiewCF (How much he’s earnt).

Best Blogs Asia.

About LiewCF

Aka Liew Cheon Fong, he has one of the most popular blogs in Asia although he covers pretty much what other tech bloggers cover too such as tech in Malaysia, web, how to, reviews, tips, downloads and ways to make money online. So why is he different and able to capitalise?

My first thoughts is that he’s a prolific blogger, having been making posts since 2004 so he’s bound to have picked up regular subscribers and commentators along the way. Other thoughts include, he documents a lot – from his Google Adsense cheques, to promoting himself as a Full Time Blogger to notable mentions on the web and in print media. This is something other bloggers may overlook, but is a valuable lesson to showcase your achievements.

Niche = Malaysian?

His niche or special characteristics compared to other Bloggers is that he’s a Malaysian blogger, doing blogging as a full time job and is successful at it. He became popular because of word of mouth in the Malaysian community and each one of his posts has at least 20 comments, so he is popular. The design of his site is quite basic, but I feel it also aids in the number of clicks he gets to his Google Adverts. If the Google Adverts are quite colourful and located in the middle of the page, he’s got a greater chance of them being clicked on.

Income Earners

He seems to mainly get his main source of blog income from:

• Google Adsense
• EchoTopic Contextual Ads
• Amazon Affiliate Program
• Recruit.net Job Search Commission?

Screenshot of LiewCF Layout

This shows the location of his Google Adsense ads, which he says makes up to 75% of his income:

Driving Traffic

He’s located in big sites like 9rules, which is difficult to get into and displays the latest feed headlines to many 9rules readers, as well as Megite, Techmeme and Webmastermalaysia.

I had a quick look at Mr Liew’s info

Y! Links: 54,400 | 73,480 – Compete Uniques | 28,625 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 4

Conclusion

I noticed that even though he’s been online blogging for a while, the number of posts he makes per month is around 20. It’s quite low compared with other Full Time bloggers like John Chow or Shoemoney and also his range of topics are quite vast, so that he doesn’t specialise in one niche group but it works for him and his readers.

Best Blogs Asia.

Yongfook Sites

He’s quite a consistent and high profile blogger, constantly posting (via twitter) and giving an insight in daily life in Japan and his travels around Asia. He’s also become popular by releasing the following applications:

Sweetcron

Sweetcron is sometimes confused as a Wordpress replacement, however in fact it’s more like a “Souped up” Feed aggregator which can take your feeds, combine them and then publish them in a readible way on your site. The ability of streaming your content has great potential but hasn’t yet taken off, for example if you’re interested in American Soccer you can use this software to combine your favourite related feeds and then display it on your site…perhaps combining with some related adverts and voila – a homemade site.

Sweetcron is popular among techies, since it’s adaptable via it’s open source software. As it’s open source he doesn’t make any revenue from this product (or see how he could in the future), although his profile has been raised which leads to greater traffic to his other sites.

Open Source Food

Open Source Food is/was a great niche site for chefs to exchange receipes and connect to each other. The site had a great potential over rivals since the layout was clear and photos had to accompany receipes. However, Opensourcefood was sold and rebranded to a strange name – Nibbledish.com. Previous revenue for this site was minimal via Google Adsense.

Yongfook.com

Yongfook.com is the flagship site, containing photos, videos, tweets and sometimes actual blog posts. The navigation and layout is very clear, which then led to the Sweetcron application. Revenue from this site looks to be minimal with on/off Amazon adverts to favourite books, such as work by Seth Godin. I think his main revenue comes from consultancy work/site development from outside sources derived from his site.

8apps, Jonkenpon, Zapzap, Gumtrail…

Sadly the above sites were created, then disbanded. I think Jon has realised he needed to concentrate on a particular untapped niche and something he enjoys doing. Each one of the above sites had potential, but since there was other similar sites already in the market there was no way to advance them…however, the skills learnt from developing those sites has passed onto his most recent work.

Driving Traffic

His secret of driving traffic to his blog is through his link backs from his other sites as well as his daily postings. Being featured on sites like TIME Magazine, TechCrunch, Digg, Ars Technica and CNET could only increase visits. I think the conclusion is to build something personal, satisfy a niche and constantly keep in touch with visitors.

I had a quick look at Mr Cockle’s info

Page Rank: 5 | del.icio.us: 794 | Digg’s Popular Stories: 2 | Yahoo Links: 30,800 | Compete.com Rank: 127,401

Best Blogs Asia.

John Chow Secrets

“The secret to making big money from anywhere in the world is to drive a lot of traffic to your blog and then turn that traffic into cash by running as many advertising options as possible while still providing a good user experience. This blog started with only Google AdSense. If I had stuck with that and nothing else, it wouldn’t be making over $1,000 per day. Check out my recommended money makers to see what ad networks I used to produce my blog income.”

Income Sources

Private Ads sales and Affilate Commissions are his biggest revenue sources. Private Ads are made up of the x8 125×125 pixel adverts on the right side of his blog, rotating stripe ads at the top of the page, 468×60 premium ads, 300×250 post embedded sponsorship, RSS adverts, featured site sponsorship and adverts at the top of particular posts.

Affilate Commissions seem to be made up of referrals to the latest programmes but are mainly from:

• Google Adsense
• Text Link Ads
• Bidvertiser
• Pepperjam
• AzoogleAds

Driving Traffic to His Blog

His secret of driving traffic to his blog is his post’s content. He writes constantly about making money online, affiliate schemes and latest technology – which is a complete change from his first posts in 2005/2006 when his site was more of a personal blog than a money making site. He also writes every day, maybe more than one post a day – again this drives traffic to his site.

I had a quick look at Mr Chow’s info

108,000 – Inbound Links | 152,278 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 3,872 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 2,405 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 4

Top 10 Backlinks

http://www.shoemoney.com/ (PR6)
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/… (PR6)
http://www.jackbook.com/ (PR6)
http://www.prettyboring.com/ (PR6)
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/way… (PR6)
http://www.wrevenue.com/ (PR6)
http://www.joelcomm.com/ (PR5)
http://blog.kontera.com/ (PR5)
http://www.gara.com/projects/boo… (PR5)
http://www.staygolinks.com/ (PR5)

Best Blogs Asia.