December 2009: $405

Bit of a delay with this month’s, seems Adbeans have reduced the payment amount or increased the delay in receiving earnings, will have to check it out.

November 2009: $405

Godaddy is now sponsoring the site, happy!

October 2009: $205

Major advertiser not showed up yet ;( however, I’m testing Lucky Pacific this month.

September 2009: $205

I was hoping to publish advertising earnings from a Major advertiser but still awaiting payments, it would of brought the month of September to it’s highest figure…lets hope it can be broken in October. Still income is from Adbeans.

August 2009: $488

This has been a great month for advertising. I think this time of the year is most benefitial, near Christmas and after the tax year are the least productive revenue times but around this time of the year there is alot of disposable income. I’ve got a couple of month’s site’s sponsorshipand Adbeans revenue.

July 2009: $302

Been busy on other projects, added a few articles this month and was contacted for some site sponsorship by Asiaclickz – thanks guys. Still using Adbeans.

June 2009: $182

Adsense was removed from the site and DGM Affiliates Asia, didn’t have a single sale ;(.

May 2009: $205

The direct adverts are gone, replaced temporarily by Adsense and now DGM Affiliates Asia. Adbeans is still my main source of income from the site.

April 2009: $216

I added more posts this month, particularly on a Malaysian blogging theme, although traffic didn’t increase so much. I also stopped the direct adverts since it effected my PR.

Joined:

• Bidvertiser
• OIO Publisher
• Infolinks
• Webgains

March 2009: $342

This month I changed the site’s SEO, created popular posts like Add URL to Feed and Make a Twitter Site as well as gaining more site sponsorship.

Joined:

• Azoogleads

February 2009: $148

Had an idea of selling image adverts on the site (via Digitalpoint), this proved succesful in raising additional income. Also Adbeans is a reliable form of income.

Joined:

• Text Link Ads

January 2009: $55

The previous months didn’t notice any pickups but I joined Adbeans and gained some revenue.

Joined:

• Adbeans

September 2008: $205

I had a sponsored post option, $200 for 1 post for 1 year only.

2008

• Blog Earnings in 2008

Best Blogs Asia.

Note: Since August 2010, I sold this site…but this information is still relevant.

Giles Dawe Background

My background is actually in Fine Art, but more on that later. I now work for myself producing websites in China through my registered company Misohoni, focusing on the specialist areas of SEO and link building. Best Blogs Asia is a great outlet to showcase my experience and provide advice. My career path is as follows:

• Learnt Web Design – Working for a Media Agency creating sites for Small/Mid Sized Customers.
• Developed Programming and Accessibility Skills – Working for Central Government.
• Worked freelance for a wide range of clients.
• Created my own sites, earning money from referrals, clicks and signups.
• Focused on SEO and link building.

What your Site should focus on

If you want to create your own site, what should you do first?

Find a niche area, perhaps something you specialise in or have a great interest as it will help you to continue with the site’s creation if hits are low.

Add content, make the page layout simple and clean and take into account SEO criteria. In order to get clicks and people linking to you, you should really have something which is of interest to people. The process of creating a site from scratch and continually developing it is a long drawn out process but can reap rewards in the long term.

Then look at affiliate programs and see how they relate to your site. If there is a relevant program and there are alot of click throughs, try increasing the number of users looking at your pages by buying advertising.

For me, I like to create unique content, interesting sites which are interactive and different.

What sort of sites do you have?

I have over 50+ niche sites specialising in a variety of fields. All are not optimised, it’s a long process but I’m slowly making them automated and run themselves. I used to run popular forums, but the upkeep was too demanding. The types of sites I have are:

• Keyworded domains – These are long term investments
• eBay automated domains – Based on popular niche groups
• Regional domains – Again are long term investments
• Article based domains – Similar to this site, require alot of upkeep

Giles Dawe Artist

As well as being the founder of my company Misohoni, I’m also a full time artist (painter). Examples of my work can be found on my Giles Dawe website.

• 1977 — Born in Bristol, UK.
• 1995 — Distinguished Certifcate in Art and Design.
• 1999 — Got a degree in Fine Art, from Cardiff and Nantes, France.
• 2000 — Worked for Daily Mail Group producing Newspaper Websites.
• 2000 — Worked for Central UK Government as Head Web Designer.
• 2003 — Came to Hong Kong and start working freelance.
• 2003 — Created Misohoni, began developing personal websites.
• 2004 – Developed Best Blogs, a leading site on bloggers in Asia.
• 2007 — Purchased Sketchplanet, an interactive drawing site from Yongfook.
• 2008 — Moved to China.
• 2009 — Began to paint full time, with exhibitions in Hong Kong and Europe.

Personal

I live in a small city called Zhuhai in China. My art work centers around stereotypes and uses recurring themes throughout (bolar hats, moody colours, landscapes etc.,) which all have personal significance to my upbringing and tastes. My latest exhibition will be held at: Opening Sat, Jan 2, through Jan 16, 2010. State-of-the-Arts Gallery, 36 Pottinger St., Central, 2526-1133.

Contact

Feel free to contact me, whether it’s in regards to a web project, web related question or art in general.

Best Blogs Asia.

2009 – Best Blogs Asia

2009 was a pretty good year for Best Blogs Asia. The site design changed, more articles were written and more comments were made than every before. I focused on:

• Less Emphasise on the blog directory (which the site is famous for).
• Custom articles aimed at Asian bloggers.
• Taking into account Affiliate Marketers in Asia too.

I’ve also managed to keep hold of current users by making the RSS available, signups for ebooks and also included details about the site in automated emails. I haven’t forgotten about the Directory section of the site, which has been online since 2004 and as far as I know is the longest running directory of Asia based blogs. But I have placed the focus on the front page containing updated content on how to maintain and get popularity for blogs/sites.

General Stats for 2009

Making Money

I’ve given honest reviews each month as to how much the site earnt. There is a form of stability from guaranteed income from Adbeans, whilst occasionally I get paid reviews or asked to write an indepth article about a company/product I’ve mentioned in the past. The site gets alot of hits for searches in Asia for famous Asian bloggers or affiliate networks.

To name a few companies who’ve contacted me directly about advertising on the site:

• Asia Clickz
• Ad Toll
• Go Daddy

2010 – Best Blogs Asia

Ok the all important focus is where the site goes next. I think a site redesign is the first step, I’m working on this right now. I want the page width wider. Also I need to focus on what I’m writing, keep it short, viewable and to the point.

I’m not so bothered about adverts on the site. Google Adsense didn’t make much and the same banner ads can get repetitive. I’ll still continue to make revenue by using keyword affiliate codes and promoting companies.

I’d love this site to be like an Asian Shoemoney. I feel I’m working hard to get content out there and let users know what is available, but is hard since Asia is so big. I’ll be paying particular attention to:

• Baidu
• Alibaba
• Lucky Pacific
• DGM Asia

Future of Affiliate Marketing

The future of affiliate marketing in Asia seems to be progressing very slowly which is a pain. Companies are slow to embrass Asia, companies over here don’t have specific offers and the most popular offers are Asian Dating or Surveys. I hope things change and need one of the major Western networks to get on board.

Conclusion

A relatively short post, if you have any questions or ideas how to progress this site…let me know!

Best Blogs Asia.

Best Blogs – Niche?

There have been some times during this site’s development, when I wondered if it was worth putting so much time involved and perhaps selling it on.

I’ve put a lot of work into the site and its original articles and I feel that this site is a leader of its niche, since there’s nothing out on the internet quite like it. You have Internet Marketers/Bloggers in the UK and US promoting themselves and affiliate programs, but nothing is really out there for Asia based marketers…so I feel this site has a value and at least is earning something.

Problems in Asia Marketing

However, the problem is that Asia based affiliate programs, affiliate networks, role models etc., are lacking or just starting up. So far I haven’t found a single Internet Marketer in Asia who makes a comparable online income to their Western counterparts.

The lack of affiliate offers is a problem, as is lack of payment terms, rate of pay and so on…everything seems brand new and there’s no real product to promote unless you are into ringtones and surveys…which is a huge competing market anyway.

Asia based Articles

There may be problems, but doesn’t mean there’s a lack of articles to write for the site. I find it interesting to do deep searches on Yahoo or Google to find answers to my own questions; perhaps I come across a link or a referral and find out more information that way.

So far there’s 135 posts with 161 comments, my favourite articles would be:

• Most Influential Bloggers in Malaysia
• Review of DGM Asia Pacific
• Asian Casino Affiliate Programs
• Make a Twitter Site using Sweetcron
• Michael Jackson Dead SEO Results

Lack of Information

So far, Asia based affiliate information is hard to come by. I’m coming across Affiliate Networks, but none are well known and there’s a lack of trust there when on their website they don’t even have a telephone number or contact address.

Future Progress

So far, I’m happy with the progress of the site. I actually don’t want the site to get too big at the moment! It seems strange to write this, but I’m wary of the lack of articles on certain subjects and at the moment the site doesn’t represent all of Asia but mainly Malaysia and China, which I need to address.

I’ve worked on some potential huge articles in the style of sites like Smashing Magazine or Noupe, but I need to make the timing right when I release them.

My thinking is, I want users to come to the site but I want them to stay. At the moment I’ve got some relevant and targeted traffic, which is great.

What’s the point of getting many users to your site, if they never come back! I’m going to concentrate on completing major articles, then see how the site progresses after the “potential huge articles” are released…so watch this space.

Best Blogs Asia.

Google Analytics Chart

Here’s a chart showing the amount of hits, page views and searches I received on Best Blogs Asia. I took part in this experiment the beginning of March and you’ll see it reflected in the chart below, hits are in blue whilst searches are in orange.

Increasing the number of Posts

I started to increase the number of posts at the start of March, as you can see the more I posted the more hits I got via searches from seach engines. I think the quality of the posts matters, the more time spent on posts the more users will appreciate it. Don’t be shy in updating old posts.

SEO Basics

Around 15th March, here I applied seo basic changes to the site which involved:

• Defining the meta tags (title, description and keywords).
• Fixing any CSS, Javascript, links and HTML errors.
• Making sure my Headings followed nicely.

SEO Advanced Part 1

On 16th March, I took the following steps – whilst these don’t guarantee instant results it lays down the path of bigger hits in the long term:

• Setup Feed and Pinged to multiple locations.
• Researched Competition (note, no actual submitting to place).

Social Media Submitting

On 17th March, I submitted to many social media sites, again this is a long term strategy.

SEO Advanced Part 2

On 18th March – 31th March, I submitted to same locations as competitors.

Wrote Articles and Press Release

On 22nd March, I wrote some Best Blogs Asia niche articles and submitted them to relevant sites. Also produced a PR article which introduced the functions of Best Blogs Asia.

SEO Advanced Part 3

On the 24th March – 31st March, I carried on with Part 2 but steped it up by joining related forums, made relevant blog posts and found more relevant visitors via Twitter.

Conclusion

Hope this is of use to you guys! As a Web Producer I should of done this many years ago, but always delayed it. Now I’m able to monetise the site (link) better and improve the number of posts on the site.

Update April 2009: Hits are now steady, about 200% increase from when started.

Best Blogs Asia.

September 2008: $205.70

I had a sponsored post option, $200 for 1 post for 1 year only.

August 2008: $17.75

I was reading how that August/September are the slowest months of the year, but it picks up again before xmas. I also read that it can take upto 4-5 months for posts to be properly spidered on Google and for regular visitors.

July 2008: $12.19

I read something on Uberaffiliate that we shouldn’t be counting blog money, but affiliate earnings…he’s right but since this site is a mix of blogging and directory links – we’ll see how it all works out.

Joined:

• Amazon Affiliates
• Ebay Affiliate
• Azoogleads

June 2008: -$17.07 (Adsense: +$2.92 – 19.99 Domain name)

I didn’t make much in June 2008 as I only started the site at the end of the month. I think it’ll take time to establish my presence and legitimacy.

Joined:

• Godaddy
• Google Adsense
• Liquidweb (my webhost)

Best Blogs Asia.

Best Blogs Launch

The launch of this site took place at the end of June 2008…but implementing features, working out what posts I wanted to add, what categories to use and integrating the site from Misohoni BBA took time. Feel free to leave your comments as to how I can improve the site, in the mean time I made the following steps to improve the blog.

Improving the Blog

• Registered my .asia domain from Go Daddy (I’m based in Asia so I qualified)
• Created the blog from Wordpress, customised the template.
• Submitted the feed to Feedburner (my feedburner)
• Submitted to Google (my Google)
• Submitted to Alexa (my Alexa)
• Submitted to Baidu
• Submitted to Delicious (my delicious)
• Submitted RSS Feeds
• Created an About Us Page (my About Us)
• Submitted to Built with (my Built With)
• Submitted to Technorati (my technorati)
• Checked for Broken links via Dead Links
• Checked the HTML page coding in Firefox
• Cleaned up the CSS with Clean CSS
• Check initial stats with Stat Brain

Best Blogs Asia.