Ronald Su dot Com

Some Websites Are Complete Waste Of Time

I saw a post yesterday listing the top 10 most complete waste of time websites on the internet. I am not totally in agreement as I find some of the websites listed are somewhat informative and interesting. One website listed though,  in my opinion, is total bull shit. It is complete waste of time, but unfortunately it is one of the most popular websites in the USA.

Fact: Some Internet Users Are Really Bored

The website is 4chan.org or simply 4chan. It is an image bullitin board for those who are bored out of their minds. Most images posted are disgusting and completely bs. Information posted are mostly nonsense with language humans won’t understand. For example, visit the board’s random section known as /b/. People there rant and argue about nothing. Sometimes they seem so creepy that you will think they don’t belong in this world.

If You Are A Frequent Visitor Of 4chan, You Should See A Doctor ASAP

Upon initially visit, my impression of 4chan.org is like the dark side of the internet. However, just the /b/ board can generate as much as 10,000 posts a day. Now you can see how many people have no life at all. It is a waste of internet bandwidth. This type of websites should be banned to save of the souls of millions.

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Tags: /b/, 4chan

Bic Promo Pens & Flip Video Contest

Bic Promo Pens and John Chow are doing a big contest right now giving away 2 Flip Video camcorders and some beautiful Bic pens. The contest ends on July 31. If you want to be part of it, head over to the contest post right now.

Promote Your Business With Bic Pens

Personally I love using Bic pens. They are always comfortable and reliable. Now you can promote your small business or blog with Bic Promo Pens. They help you print your logo on those beautiful pens and help increase your brand awareness.

You Can Win A Flip Video

If you want some customized Bic pens and a Flip Video, you must enter the contest. Entering is easy, all you have to do is comment on the post. If you want to increase your chance to win, you can blog about it like what I am doing right now. You can tell I really want to win the Flip Video. I can’t buy it in stores in Canada, so this is my only chance!

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Tags: contest, flip video

Firefox 3 Download Day: A World Record Setting Event

I know most of you fellow bloggers and visitors have ditched the old Internet Explorer because it sucks. What is the most popular browser these days? Firefox for sure. Firefox in my opinion is way better than IE in any way, especially in performance and usability.

You Can Help Set A New World Record

Firefox 3 promises to deliver even better performance and stability. It’s official launch date is June 17, 2008. The team is aiming to set a new world record for most downloads per day for Firefox 3. They name the launch day “Download Day 2008′. They are asking everyone to help out in their Spread Firefox website.

Spread The Word

No problem! I will play my part in this meaningful event. I will download my copy on June 17 and help spread the words. Do you use Firefox? Do you like the performance and usability of Firefox? It’s super nice for Mozilla for providing a top-notch browser for free. Do your part too! Help spread the words!

edit: 8 million people have downloaded Firefox 3 on Download Day 2008. That’s 3 million more than their expected 5 mil. Congratulations to the Mozilla Team!

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Tags: download day 2008, firefox 3

Tips On Selling Online

I used to be a very active seller on eBay as I bought things in bulb from China and list them online. That was about 2 years ago and I totally gave up on that business because eBay was totally treating me like crap.

My idea of writing this post came from reading this post called “It’s Now Completely Impossible To Sell A Laptop On eBay“. It is about how difficult it was for this guy named Timothy to sell his laptop on eBay. It got my attention as it brought back my angry memories.

Are You a Scammer?

There was nothing wrong with eBay itself but the scammers and eBay’s effort to stop scammers were driving me crazy. It’s nice for eBay to try hard at getting rid of scammers and sellers of fake stuff, but they went way too far.

I used sell silver jewelries. They were no name generic ones but some of their designs were similar to brands like Tiffany & Co and others. eBay suspended my account because they thought I was selling counterfeit items. I tried to contact them but there were simply no way one could reach live real help. If you try to email them they would just reply you with an auto-reply that’s totally unrelated. I opened a new account with my friend’s name and they suspended it again. I totally gave up on selling on eBay and listed my products locally instead. I listed them on Craigslist and they were all sold in less than a month.

Get Paid Instantly With No Fees

If you want to sell something, sell them on local listing sites like Craigslist. You get to meet the person and they pay you instantly. Not to mention you pay no fees what so ever. Here are some tips for a safe and no hassle selling experience:

1) Sell locally because you see the person and you get paid in person. The most popular is Craiglist.

2) If an interested buyer emailed you, ask to communicate via phone. This will ensure he’s actually going to buy it. You will save a lot of time by talking over the phone.

3) Pick a public place to meet. Don’t meet in your house or the buyer’s house. If you can, try to bring along a friend with you. This will greatly protect your safety.

4) When you count the money, try to do it so that not many people can see it. You don’t want a lot of people know you have a pocket full of cash.

5) Try to leave after the buyer after transaction. Tell the person you are going to have another cup of coffee and he should leave first. This will prevent the person from following you and rob you.

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Tags: craigslist, ebay, selling

eBay Abandons Commission Junction

I didn’t read my emails during the weekend because I went to Victoria BC for vacation. Did some photo shooting and relaxed a little. Today is back to school and work day all over again. Opened up my mail box while in Account class and found out there were a lot of things happened during the weekend. Most of the emails in my box were news alerts and reports on the Bear Sterns amazing buyout by JPMorgan. Two dollars a share? I pray good luck to their shareholders. Another chunk of emails were about the crash of the Build A Niche Store server. The email said the server was hacked and brought down. It didn’t affect me, but I heard most BANS owners couldn’t access their admin panel for a long time. The most surprising subject is the news regarding eBay moving their affiliate efforts in-house.

The New eBay Partner Network

eBay will take back its affiliate network from Commission Junction (CJ) as of April 1, 2008, which is the beginning of next month. I guess eBay noticed the growing number of affiliates since the launch of BANS and wanted to cut the middleman. All BANS owners must be aware that eBay will reward all affiliates moving to their partner network by increasing April commission by 5%. So get ready for the move now!

Pros And Cons For The Switch

I don’t see any real issues for eBay taking back control over its affiliate network. My only concern with the switch is that eBay may not be ready to match the same level of support as CJ. CJ has a pretty good support system and generally replies for questions really fast. I was once an eBay seller and I knew how crappy eBay is in terms of support. They don’t really care about you unless you’re their power or platinum sellers. The good side for the switch should be more control and customization for affiliates. It should also improve in sales tracking as links are directed straight to the eBay site.

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Tags: affiliate, bans, Build A Niche Store, cj, commission junction, ebay, in-house, partner network, pros and cons, sales

I Am Totally Up For A New Theme

I was on Jasonboom.com the other day, reading the post called “Weekly Implosion: February in Review“. I must admit Jason is a very good writer and very knowledgeable in what he has to say. I ended up looking through his blog design and his theme. It’s quite neat and what got most of my attention is his logo figure and the bomb figures. They help create a strong branding image to his readers.

Blog Oh Blog Has Nice Free Wordpress Themes

I checked out his theme’s footer and saw the theme was designed by Jai Nischal Verma from Blog Oh Blog. I followed the link and landed on Blog Oh Blog’s website. They have some very nice Wordpress themes for grab. Some themes do require you to buy them in order to use them but most of the themes on their site are free. Jai’s newest design is called “Chronicles“. It is a very functional 3 column theme that is suitable for most niche blogs. It totally convinced me to switch my current theme to it.

Time For a New Theme

The theme design is great but I find the colors to be not my cup of tea. When I adopt the Chronicle theme, I will change the colors to a brighter color and add in my favorite red. I also find the RSS subscribe icon and the blog title locations to be mismatched. I think it will look much better if they switch places. It’s all up to me and I will test out the theme whenever I have a chance. I think I also need a custom logo to help brand myself. However, I will not use a cartoon like figure for it since everyone else is doing it now. Tyler Cruz, John Cow, Jason Boom …

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Tags: blog oh blog, blogging, branding, design, image, logo, theme, wordpress

A Good Domain Is Worth A Million

Domain names have came down in price from $30 2 years ago to now only $10. Almost everyone can afford to own a domain. Most online activists I know own more than 5 domains. I, too, own more than 5 domains but very few of them are good ones. Since everybody can get domain names these days, it is very difficult to see a top quality one still available for grab.

If you plan to open up a few niche stores, you must find some decent domain names that are specific to your niche so you can get some hits from search engines. Let me give you an example. Couple weeks ago I got an Asus Eee PC as a gift. I was actually very interested at buying one for a long time. I knew it is a very hot item but still not a lot of people got their hands it. I used WebCEO to do some research on it and found that the term “buy asus eee” has lots of searches a day but not a lot of competitions. I then went over to Godaddy.com to find a domain that at least contain “buy asus eee” in it. I typed in buyasuseee.com and amazingly it was still available. I bought it instantly. I uploaded Build a Niche Store (aka BANS) on it and left it empty for a few days as I was extremely busy. After those few days, I checked the stats for the empty BANS site and saw Google already visited and brought in 6 hits with the term “buy asus eee”. This is the power of a good domain and basic research.

You can find good domains too. But it requires some forward looking and some researching. Try to see what will be the next hot thing and look for available domains related to it. Another approach is to find a very specific domain. Let me show you how I find a good domain using this approach. I am a long time Nikon camera user and I am only interested in Nikon cameras and lenses. I go to Terapeak (an eBay research tool) and search the term “nikon”. It has many listings but the sell-through rate is only at around 35%. I look at its related keywords and found that the term “nikkor” has a better rate at around 56%. Nikkor is Nikon’s lens division. It is quite specific because most likely only Nikon or camera enthusiasts will know about it. Now that I have this idea in mind, I go to Godaddy.com and see if there’s any good domain left for a Nikkor Lens niche site. I type in “nikkorlens.com” and it is already taken. I type in “nikkorlenses.com” and it is still available! Let’s try another one for a potential niche store. I search “buynikkor.com” and it is available too! This is just one of the ways to find a specific domain and you may find other ways more effective.

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Tags: bans, Build A Niche Store, domain, domain name, godaddy, name, Niche, research, site, store, terapeak

MoneyNing Is Getting Married And Giving $1500 Away

David from MoneyNing.com is getting married in a few days and he is putting on a very cool draw for everyone to participate. All you have to do is help him promote his blog. You may end up winning all of the $1500 by promoting his blog more than once.

Subscribing to his RSS feed by email will give you 20 tickets. Stumble upon his post will give you 5 tickets. Linking to his post or blog will give you 10 tickets. Linking and writing a review about his blog will give you 20 tickets. If you do them all you will get 55 tickets. That’s a big chance to shoot for the $1500!

Let me give you some background on David’s blog. The blog MoneyNing.com has a weird name but David puts up many useful information about personal finance. Every Monday he has Motivation Monday. Just like my Inspiration Monday, he tries to motivate and inspire fellow bloggers.

MoneyNing.com has a nice and clean interface and the home page should contain all the information you can digest. Subscribe to his RSS feed and you will have finance articles delivered to your inbox. If you are a blogger, David is very friendly and will most likely to link to your blog if it has good content. Here you go David, this review is yours. Please will give me 20 tickets and a peice of the $1500.

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Tags: contest, draw, giving money

A Dream To Earn a Full Time Income Online

Have you heard of CPA? Do you want to know how to go from making $0 to $300 per day from CPA marketing? My friend Ivan Ong from http://www.ivan-ong.com has released an ebook telling you what exactly CPA is and how to make $300 per day from it.

He is a very passionate student from Singapore looking for ways to make money on the web. He has discovered CPA marketing and went from making nothing to $300 a day from his campaigns in just 2 months. In his free ebook, he lays out the secrets that lead him to his success. The secrets and how-tos are there but it takes dedication and consistancy to become a big name in internet marketing.

If you are a student or a day jobber and want to be make a passive $300 daily income like Ivan Ong, head over to his website now and download his free ebook. I am sure his work will inspire you.

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Tags: cost per action, CPA, internet marketing, Making Money

Update On Build A Niche Store (BANS) Project

It was been a week since I’ve written about my Build A Niche Store (BANS) project. Boy! It was a though time getting the script installed. It wasn’t the script’s fault though. After days of solution hunting I’ve got through it and finally got something to show. You can view the project site at CellPhoneJet.com, feel free to add any comment or suggestion.

Main page of CellPhoneJet.com, my Build A Niche Store project featuring the coolest cell phone auctions.

After 2 days of customizing the layout and pages, it now looks like a full functional website. However, it still needs some search engine optimizing and original content creating. My schedule for this week is to finish building the website and by next week I can start driving traffic to it. The funny thing is that I have notice Googlebot had already visit the site and received 4 unique hits even though I had never setup a link to it. I’ve already started to brainstorm my next niche store in order to reach my 5 stores in 3 months goal.

Also, I’ve noticed there is an online course on blogging for profit called Blog Mastermind. Read about it in Chris Bloczynski’s blog. I wonder if there will be a university degree in the future called “Blogging” in the faculty of Business.

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Tags: affiliate, bans, blog mastermind, blogging, Build A Niche Store, cell phone, cool phone, ebay, web design, web development