I love Coke Zero

Coca Cola had always been my favourite soft drink. I later changed to Diet Coke because I wanted to reduce my sugar intake. Somehow, it wasn't the same and I never did like the taste of the latter. I was really glad when they brought out the Coke zero. It tastes just like the original Coke and I can drink without guilt knowing that it doesn't contain any sugar. As their tag line goes:

Coke zero : Life as it should be : Real taste, zero sugar

Take a look at their new campaign “Life as it should be”. It really great and interactive fun. They have come up with a few old black and white movie clips. You can choose one of them and manipulate the movie. You can make one of the actors say what ever you want them to say - just add your own words. You can then send the movie to your friends. It will then go on to compete with other movies to be the highest rated.

San Francisco Sightseeing

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name 'San Francisco'. I guess different people may answer differently: the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island Gay rights, etc. As for me, it's a song - San Francisco (be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair) by Scott McKenzie (1967). It goes like this:

If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there ...

It recalls the Summer of love when thousands of young people from all around the US came to the city to experience the Hippie counterculture.

San Francisco has loads of tourist attractions and things to do. If you are planning a San Francisco Sightseeing trip, you might want to consider Trusted Tours. This national tour operator has a number of great deals on their San Francisco tours. Looking through the various offers, one I would love to take is the San Francisco Motorized Cable Car Tour, a 2.5 Hours long guided tour aboard an authentic motorized cable car. It costs only $26.60 for an adult and $13.30 for a child. The tour takes you through some of the most interesting parts of the city including Vista Point at Golden Gate Bridge, Twin Peaks, Fisherman's Wharf, Palace of Fine Arts and more.

You can also up for the Trusted Tours eNewsletter to get the latest low price deals direct by email.

The Coca-Cola with Orange

Just noticed an ad for the new limited edition Coca-Cola with orange. According to the ad, it is available in 3 sizes, namely, 6 pack of 330ml cans, 500ml and 2 litre bottles. Later learnt that this particular limited edition is for release in the UK only. The drink contains 1% orange fruit from concentrate.

I couldn't find it in the Tesco Metro outlet near my house.

Wonder how it tastes like.

Help with B2B marketing

If you are a business owner I am sure that you are interested in generating more sales. An area of concern relates to converting interest into sales.

Came across the "Ways to Boost Direct Marketing Results" on 'The Lead Dogs' site. They say:

1. Have an offer
2. Use telemarketing before the promotion
3. Use telemarketing after the promotion
4. Give a unique URL
5. Personalize all aspects of your direct marketing campaign

The Lead Dogs is a lead development company that works with business-to-business marketers and help aggressively find and pursue business leads. Established in 1994, they actively help companies to generate, manage, nurture and close the loop on sales leads using Business to Business Telemarketing and other tools.

You can download case studies about how they helped their clients to generated real results, from their website.

BTW, I really found their story of how they came up with their company name, hilarious.

Why do you buy designer sunglasses

My friend Nick collects sunglasses. He has so many that they fill up two drawers, arranged neatly in rows. These are not just any sunglass but designer brands. We once watched the first Matrix movie together and liked what he saw. So off we went to grab a wrap around Ray-Ban like the one that Neo wore in the movie. I was laughing at him but I too had a similar experience when I first watched Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as an ace pilot. Went and bought myself a replica aviator. I thought I looked cool.

And you thought that sunglasses were merely to protect your eyes from the harmful UV rays. Was wondering whether movies and celebs influence our decision to buy sunglasses?

Just sometime back, I was at this optical shop and these two girls were excited about one particular sunglass. It looked like something from the 60s - big with white rims and I thought it was really ugly. Could help but over hear the girls. They were going, "it just looks like Paris Hilton's" or something like that. I guess big glasses with white rims are back in fashion. I can see a lot of people wearing them.

Whatever your reason, if you are looking for latest designer sunglasses, check out the 2007-08 Designer Sunglasses Collections at Optics Place. The website carrries the most affordable prices on a range of designer brands including Gucci, Prada, Versace, RayBan and much more. You don't have to go to different stores to compare and find the sunglass of your liking.

Besides sunglasses, the site also has a good selection of eyeglass frames, contact lenses, safety glasses and accessories. As someone who wear glasses, I was more interested in the information on eye health and the vision correction options. I found a lot of them to be very useful.

Father's day gift tips

Father's day is on the 17th of this month - this coming Saturday. Have you thought about a gift for your father or your partner, who's a father? I was going through several blogs and can see that a lot of people are scratching their brains for the right gift.

If you haven't thought about a gift for the father in your life (shame on you), well here are some great tips from Belisi.com. Regulars to my blog will have noticed that I carry news about this fashion brand quite often. This is because I believe that this brand will definitely grow in the future.

This brand was started by Peter Belisi (check out his picture), whose lifelong aspirations were to fuse the luxury and prestige of Palm Beach with Italian sophistication. Belisi’s unwavering commitment to creating fashion products is evident by the quality and detail that goes into each product.

The company started out and became famous for their luxurious ties which are made from silk. Their online store also carries handbags, scarves and pocket squares.In case you were wondering about the last product, it refers to silk handkerchief used as an accessory to a suit. Belisi suggests that a luxurious silk pocket square may just be the right Father's day gift - something different.

The company also offer the latest insights, trends and tips from fashion, beauty and lifestyle experts in their fashion blogs, namely, TheDivasDreams.com for women and SharpByDesignblog.com for men. Another blog BeautifulMeblog.com, focuses on beauty—inside and out. Highly recommended for those who are fashion and beauty conscious.

It is interesting to note how Belisi sees itself:

...an online community where customers are “Insiders” instead of order numbers.

Peter Belisi welcomes all comments, suggestions or questions and responds to his clients personally. That's what I call true "customer service". I also like the fact that every time a customer purchases a Belisi product, a portion of that goes to a charity of their choice. They refer to this as the "Luxury with Meaning" program. I wish all companies thought like that.

Following is a press release from Belisi.com
~ * ~ * ~

Finding the Right Gift for Father’s Day May Not Be as Hard as You Think

Give a Gift Dad Will Remember…Luxurious, Stylish, and Thoughtful

PALM BEACH , FLORIDA (MAY 15, 2007) Okay, so Father’s Day is right around the corner. Wondering what to get Dad? Neckties are often times considered the “stand-by” gift for guys but not anymore. More and more Dads are putting their best fashion foot forward with colorful neckties, as they know this simple accessory can make or break an outfit. Whether you are looking for the red power tie or sophisticated yet casual, there is a tie for every occasion. Give Dad a gift he will remember, something he can wear and treasure for years to come. Dad will feel extra special this year with a beautiful Italian necktie or pocket square from Belisi. With each Father’s Day purchase at Belisi, customers will receive free shipping with their orders. To qualify for free shipping, customers should visit Belisi.com.

Belisi ties are made with more silk per inch than the average tie, which creates a fuller necktie knot, the hallmark of true luxury silk neckties. They come in a variety of colors and styles, so it’s easy to select a thoughtful gift that any father would appreciate.

Pocket Squares, which are making a big comeback, also make excellent Father's Day gifts. Belisi pocket squares are oversized, made with a lavish thick silk and hand-rolled on the border. So if you want to give a unique gift for that special guy in your life, a pocket square fits the bill. Another reason ties are still a fresh gift idea is that men can wear ties that accessorize with their partner’s silk scarf, which she can wear tied around her neck or draped around her shoulders as a shawl, tied on her wrist, worn as a belt or handbag accessory or in her hair (a very hot trend right now).

Belisi Fashions remains steadfast in giving back to those less fortunate. Through the “Belisi Luxury with Meaning” program a minimum of 10 percent of the company’s pre-tax profits are donated to those in need. Keeping in-line with Belisi’s mission to create a community within a community, customers decide which charity to make their contribution. Some of the charities include: Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, American Heart Association, and 1-800-Save-A-Pet.com.

Belisi was built on the philosophy that a tie or a scarf is more than an article of clothing—it completes your look. “There are plenty of Web sites where you can buy accessories but few where you feel like you’re a part of a fashion community,” affirms Peter Belisi of Belisi Fashions.

The Belisi brand is flourishing, and anticipates the release of its new luxury handbag collection in Fall ’07. As with all Belisi products, the handbag collection will feature extraordinary detailing including real gold hardware, soft treated Italian leather and brushed fabrics, plus many other exclusive features only available through www.Belisi.com.

Belisi Press Contact:
Amy Covington
amycovington@belisi.com
800.434.1962

Agency Contact:
Cher Murphy
cm@newsworthystories.com
703.323.5976

Updated: 14 June, 07

Making money by carrying news

Learned that the highly awaited Apple's new iPhone will be launched on June 29.

I just got this news from the The News Room, an online news site of Voxant, the Viral Syndication Network, that provides access to hundreds of thousands of fully licensed quality news from major content providers such as Associated Press (AP), Reuters and lots more.

You might be amazed to learn that the news can be published, or 'mashed' by embedding them on your site totally FREE OF CHARGE. Best of all, you earn money at the same time. YES! That's right. You can make money via advertising share, the CPM start at $1. For those who were not aware, CPM is the measure of the Cost Per Impression in online advertising. TheNewsRoom has an innovative, viral payment model. I learned that their CRM is one of the highest in the industry. Check out their payment chart here.

Choosing the news of your choice (and relevant to your blog) and embedding it on my blog was so easy. Take a look at the "mash" below:

All I had to do after signing up, was to click the "mash button", accept the terms and conditions, choose the layout and finally copy and paste the code into my blog. It's amazing. I get great quality content and I get paid for carrying it on my blog. Almost forgot to mention that, I also earn money when someone mashes content from my site and it is viewed on their site/ blog.

And there's more. They also have a loyalty program in place whereby, new registrants can earn prizes such as digital cameras and even a new car. So what are you waiting for?

Help yourself through subliminal suggestions

During my MBA in University Malaya, I took the Consumer behaviour course and once we were discussing about subliminal advertising. The lecturer was telling us about an researcher who claimed that he had been able to influence people to purchase more Coca Cola and popcorn by quickly flashing messages on a movie screen.

Of course as a consumer myself, I am not really favourable with the idea that companies are messing around with my head in order to get me to buy more of their products and services.

Anyway, I learnt that subliminal messages may actually be used for beneficial purposes. Got to about this website called Subliminal-cds.com (http://www.subliminal-cds.com/) that sells subliminal CDs. With over 120 different titles, the retailer claims to help you with everything from loosing weight to getting over phobias.

The subliminal CDs utilizes the 5-Part Encoding System™ developed by self-development guru, Bradley Thompson.

To be honest, I haven't tried it out myself but the website has a impressive list of corporate customers including AT&T, IBM, FedEx, the BBC, British Telecom, Microsoft and even the US Army among others.

Crazy ad campaign

Advertising companies are coming out with innovative and memorable ad campaigns for their clients and the latest battlefield or medium to attract consumers is the blogosphere. The crazier the ads, the better - especially humorous videos as they generate more attention and word-of-mouth promotion.

The rest of this post was deleted on request of advertiser.
Fight for the flavor

Grab cool audio and video equipment

Have a confession to make - I do make money from my blog. I am sure that regular visitors have noticed that some of my posts are sponsored reviews.

Since October last year, I have joined a few customer generated advertising companies, my favourite being PayPerPost.com. The company is a pioneer and it has led to a paradigm shift - from advertising by companies in the mass media to consumer generated advertising. Companies were initially reluctant to advertise in this new medium - many still are but more and more companies have joined in as they see the advantage of this new advertising medium.

Members which are known as Posties take up suitable opportunities (PPP Opps) and get paid after a period of time. You might be amazed to learn that Posties have won up to $1000 for a single opp. Unfortunately I am not one of them.

I was really excited to learn about the latest announcement. Not only do we stand a chance of making money from the oops but we might earn great products too. Every Tuesday this month PayPerPost is holding something they call the "HDTV Tuesday". We stand a chance of winning all sorts of cool audio and video equipment for specially marked opportunities. Some of the lucky guys have already won TVs and a PS3. However, the prize that everyone is looking out for is a new HDTV at the end of this month. All of this is due to Bid4Prizes who are sponsoring the prizes.

The prizes today are a Slingbox, Nintendo Wii, Yamaha Surround Sound System and a Logitech universal remote. Unfortunately, only U.S. residents can take the opps.

Search engine friendly web directory

There are so many directories on the web that I have lost count. You can submit your site but I am not really sure whether anyone would ever see your site (or blog). In most case, the link value from submitting to these directories are virtually nil if your site is new. However, Big Web Links Directory is a search engine friendly web directory with a different concept for directory listings. Here, you have to bid for placement on their listings. In fact, it was among the first using this concept, which has been copied by several other directories.

Instead of sorting listings by popularity, Page Rank, or alphabetically, the listings with Big Web Links are sorted by the bid amount. Thus, webmasters can control the position of listings in the directory. I like the fact that a listing contribution increases take immediate effect.

The top 10 listings are shown on the homepage, while the top 20 listings are shown on the top links page. So if you want to get on the top listings of a directory as soon as possible, you should submit your site to bigweblinks.com.

The directory has a strong link value due to the fact that it has a Google PageRank of 7.

Flippies making a comeback

I am sure that all of you have come across or even owned a flippie at one time or the other. Flippies (or Flip books ) refer to "books with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change" (Source: Wikipedia).

Their popularity died out with the advent of movies and later TV. However, they are making a come back as an effective and unique advertising tool.

Recently, this company called Flippies has re-engineered the novelty into a bona fide promotional advertising tool. Now, commercials, sports moments, product demos and even your own video clips can be transferred into print as a flippie. Check out the Flippies Custom Flip Books


Among all the advertising mediums available today, I am sure you will agree that this is certainly a unique yet simple way of promoting a product or service. Presents a range of marketing possibilities - from product launches to conference giveaway items.

Bristol classifieds site

If you live in Bristol, moving there or going there for a few days, you should check out this local bristol site. This one stop Bristol resource lists local businesses, homes for sale, restaurant reviews and lots more. Good news for local businesses, listings on the site is totally free.

If you are visiting and looking for a place to stay, you should check out their list of hotels.

1k dollars tuesday

Today, there was an announcement by PayPerPost.com, one of the largest and most popular blog advertising companies, that left me (and I am sure - a lot of other posties) really excited. They call it the 1K Tuesday.

1K of course stand for $1000 and ppp will be releasing at least one $1000 opportunity every Tuesday between 12 am and 12pm with no segmentation guaranteed. For non-posties and other people who are not aware, the company rolled out segmentation some time back. According to this new system, advertisers can choose the type of blogs that can carry their ads. The higher paying opportunities would usually be reserved for blogs with higher Google page ranks (pr) or lower Alexa ranking (the lower the better). The $1000 opportunities are usually reserved for blogs with Google page rank 7 and above. Those of us with lower Google PRs could only watch with envy as these blogs remained out of our reach.

So you can now understand why I am really really excited about this announcement. If I am lucky, I shall be richer by $1000 tomorrow and all I would have to do is write a post here on my blog.

This promotion start tomorrow and will run till the end of April.

Note: Posties refer to member of PayPerPost.com.

Google adsense on your blog

Was going through this post: "No sense in AdSense". Totally agree with Paul when he says,

"...for smaller sites (and I mean much smaller) it just isn’t really a big earner and often it doesn’t do anything except take up screen real-estate."

I have been running Google adsense on my blog since April 24, 2004. If you ask me how much I have earned from the ads, I can only say - not much. I used to have Google ads plastered all over my blog but not anymore. Later learnt that eople are turned off by too many ads on a site. Now, I still have some ads on my site but slowly culling those wthat don't bring me any or negligible revenue.

BTW, Paul is a web monkey since 1998 (his own words not mine), Read Paul's Rants and Revelations.

Tags: google adsense ads

Pingo pre paid cards

We call out a lot to friends and relatives all around the World but mostly to Malaysia. After receiving a shock with our first telephone bill, we decided to go for pre paid calling cards recommended by our friends here. Everybody seems to have their own favourite brand or company and we are trying out a couple.

Recently I heard about Pingo.com and intrigued when I heard that Pingo’s mobile users save 90% or more on their international calls and am thinking of signing up.



I am also thinking of recommending Pingo pre paid calling cards to the philippines to some of my Filipino friends in the US after I learned that the calls rates are as low as $0.138/ minute for a call.

Anybody who signs up with Pingo.com will receive 4 hours of free International calls. There is another great offer for readers who sign up for Pingo through my blog - they will receive US$5 in FREE Calls.

For your information, Pingo is a service offered by iBasis, a public company and one of the largest carriers of international phone calls in the world.

Something up at Payperpost

There has been several rumours regarding a big news in the next few weeks at Payperpost. As a postie with this market leader in online customer generated advertising, I am keeping my fingers crossed. Though PayPerPost, I get paid for voicing my opinion on my blogs.

Having racked my brains, thinking "what are they going to announce?", I have come up with not one but a few possibilities. They are as listed below:

1. They are going to take over another advertising competitor and grow even bigger.
2. They have decided to sell to Google or Yahoo.
3. They have come up with the "Postie of the Year" award and the winner is ME.
But seriously No!
and finally....
4. They have decided to go public.
Come to think of it, the last option is a definite possibility. They WILL have to go public in the near future if they want to grow and expand.

This will definitely be a good news for us old posties who already feel some kind of affinity with the company. We will also get the chance to own a part of it.

On the other hand, the number of detractors as well as jealous competitors might increase, as it always does when you become big.

Really looking forward to finding out what they are going to reveal.

Having a bla.st

Yesterday night I added my card on the bla.st directory. In case you haven't heard, Bla.st is an experimental visual card directory.

What makes this directory different from Fuelmyblog and other similar advertising sites is that it is not limited to blogs or websites. You can also promote your products and services, events and even make announcements.


This site is the brainchild of Tim Bromhead who also has a blog here.

bla.st cards can be online from 1 day to 10 years and can be placed into any category. Best of all, payment is optional. However, you can go higher up in the listings if you decide to pay. I guess that's only fair.

My listings for the ah ok lah blog is here and for the auto lah blog is here.

I learnt about the site from Larry.

Tags: bla.st Advertising

Jacksonville Florida classified ads

If you live in the Jacksonville, Florida area and interested in selling or buying something, then you should check out Jacksonville Classifieds. The site has ads ranging from used cars to real estate.

This free service, which allows private sellers to place classified ads for is offered by Jax4sale.com, part of the USA4SALE Networks, Inc. The company, which launched its first site in 1998, is said to be the latest classified site in the US. It now has several sites serving all of central Florida.

Sponsored

Earnings on Payperpost

As most of my regulars know, I have been blogging for more than 3 years now on my ah ok lah blog. Autolah was my second blog, which specifically focuses on the auto industry and everything and anything related to cars.

However, I didn't earn a single cent from my blogs even though I did receive some projects from people who got to know me through them. That was until I joined Payperpost.

Anyway, I joined as a "postie" with Payperpost.com, the leader in blog advertising, only in December last year. My wife has stopped complaining about my blogging habit after she saw that I was making money from it. So far I have been paid US $149.30 and am yet to be paid a few hunred dollars more (plus $10 if this post is accepted). That's pretty good considering that I am a newbie.

SO what am I going to do with the money that I have already earned?

Well I am going to transfer a bit to my wife's account, use some to buy household stuff and I am also planning to buy a few domain names.