Visitor Statistics

I do check my site statistics from time to time. Right now, I have several site meters running on the blog - don't ask me why. However, I find that Google Analytics provides the most informative visitor statistical analysis. Of course, you have to do the deeper analysis yourself.

It was quite interesting to learn that the 5 most popular page on my blog are:

1. Melayu Boleh.
2. Freemasons in Malaysia
3. Tricked into holding a contest
4. Keys to Our Apartment &
5. FAQs

The top 5 keywords used to get to my blogs were:

1. melayu boleh
2. flora damansara
3. ok lah
4. lah &
5. domain cheap

The top keyword used to get here as well as the top post on my blog, may be a proof of the theory that a there are a lot of naughty guys around searching for adult content on the net using certain keywords and unfortunately, a seemingly innocent phrase 'melayu boleh' happens to be one of them.

Anyway, I found out that most of my visitors are still from Malaysia. Take a look at the graph below (this year till date):


They make up 40.27% of the total visitors. It used to be around 80% middle of last year. This represents a drastic change in visitor statistics. As expected, visitors from UK come in second making up 17.81% of the total, closely followed by visitors from the US (17.70%).

Visitors from India have also more than doubled. It was less than 1% last year. Might have something to do with the fact that I joined Orkut recently. Read my post 'Most popular social networking site in India'.

Have you checked your site stats recently?

Tags: Google analytics Keywords Melayu boleh Site statistics

Not all Bloggers are teenage girls

A few years ago, when I talked to a lot of non-bloggers, they were under the impression that blogs are the online journals of teenage girls. I strongly objected to that as 1) I am not a teenager and 2) I am not a girl and 3) my blog is more than just a journal. Of course there might be some truth in this. I had posed a question in one of my early blog posts. Namely, "Are most bloggers, Girls?"

Thankfully I can see that most people have now changed their perception of blogs. In fact now, a lot of people read blogs to get the latest update on tech news and in several countries, uncensored political news. People from all demographic groups are also becoming bloggers themselves. It's not just young people but the older generation as well.

I recently got to know another blogger who started her blog "Sunflower's Thoughts" in November last year. She's a mother of 3 boys from Effingham, Illinois, United States.

Her first post was really similar to mine. The only difference is that mine was only a single sentence. She says:

Well I might as well jump on the band wagon and get a blog started. I have seen so many people with blogs, so I thought I would try it.

Like a lot of newbies, she is blogging with Blogger and is also a fellow PPP postie.

Each blogger has a different style of writing. For example, you can see her posts are quite short. On the other hand, some people complain that my posts are too long. I would love to read more about life in Illinois and see some pictures too.

What about you? Are you a blogger too and how long have you been blogging?

Tricked into holding a contest

Warning: This is a long post.

Some of you might recall that I had organised a Nitro T-shirt contest on my auto blog. It was not as successful as I had hoped it would and even though it received a fair bit of interest, there were no takers for it except for two bloggers who were also the winners by default.

That's when the problem started. the Dodge Nitro T-shirts were supposed to be sponsored but I totally lost contact with the sponsors (or they cut me off).

How did this saga start?

Well I was approached by a Corrie Zielinski from a company called New Media Strategies. I later found out that this online advertising and Marketing firm is based in Arlington, Virginia.

Given below is her first e-mail to me:

Hi Adam,

My name is Corrie Zielinski, and I just came across Auto Lah. I’m working with Dodge Nitro and have some t-shirts available for a contest. Would you be interested in running one? I think your site is great, and I’d love to work with you.

Thanks!

Corrie

I told her that I was interested and asked her to tell me a little bit more about the contest and what I would be required to do. This is her reply on Feb 22:

Hi Adam!

The contest process is pretty simple:

I provide you with the number of shirts I can make available to you, pictures of said shirts, and some additional picture assets you can use for the contest if you want. Then, we usually suggest a simple "enter to win" contest, where people email you and you can randomly pick a winner.
You send me the address, and I'll send the t-shirt to the winner or winners. That way, you don't have to pay for postage - we ship a LOT of stuff, so we have a pretty well honed system for getting stuff out the door quickly.

Does that sound good?

I told her what I planned to do and she wrote back on Feb 23:

Hey Adam!

That is the best idea - I love it!

I can give you one Dodge Red Long Sleeve T-Shirts and One Short Sleeve
Black "Can" T-Shirts. (If you look at the "Can" picture you'll totally
get why I call it that. I still can't figure out how they do it.)

I'd really appreciate it if you could include a link to official Dodge
site at (http://www.dodge.com/en/nitro/index.html). I'm also sending you
a link of a bunch of assets that we've collected from Dodge - pictures,
logos, magazine articles, etc. You're free to use whatever you want! The
asset links are available here: http://www.media-file.net/dodge/nitro/

Thank you so much, and let me know when the contest is live - I can't
wait to see it AND read the stories (have been personally drooling over
the Nitro since we get this project).

Thanks!
Corrie

The contest ended and on March 26 I informed Corrie about the results and that I had two winners.

I received the reply dated Mar 26 :

Corrie Zielinski

Hey adam - go ahead and get their addresses o we can get those sent. No worries on the parcipitation, it happens. I have no internet right now - thank god for blackberry!

Thanks, corrie
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

That was the last time I ever heard from her.

I obtained the addresses of the winners and sent them to her ... No acknowledgement! I had a bad feeling about that.

Then early this month, I learned that the winners hadn't received the t-shirts till date.

Sent Corrie another e-mail from an alternative e-mail address as I was afraid that the one sent from my Gmail might have landed in her spam filter ... No reply!

I then contacted the company through their website ... No reply! Sent email directly to them ... Still no reply!

Finally I realised that something was definitely wrong.

Searching on the net, I found out that a similar contest had ran on Kineda.com. On contacting Terry, the webmaster of the site,he informed me that he had had no problems with Corrie and

She delivered everything as promised.

I am not sure what happened. One thing is sure. I am never going to have a sponsored contest on my blogs again unless I have full control.

In the end, I had to send the winners Don and Doris a T-shirt each from my own online store.

Let this be a warning to all bloggers out there.

UPDATE:
I am really happy to announce that everything turned out great in the end. The whole fiasco was due to e-mail problems.

Tags: Contest Corrie Zielinski Dodge Nitro New Media Strategies Scam

Am I the hottest daddy blogger

I am in running for the Hottest Daddy Blogger on the Blogger's Choice Awards.

It is perfectly clear that I won't be able to break into the top 10 (unless there's some miracle). However, was quite pleased to find that till date I have received 16 votes (when I last checked) and in the top 20.

What most people don't know is that my blog is also self nominated for the "Best Marketing Blog" as well as for the "Best Blog About Blogging"

If you like my blog, please vote for me.







Tags: Blogger's choice awards hottest daddy blogger

Hottest daddy blogger

I have been nominated for the Blogger's choice awards "Hottest daddy blogger".



Vote for me.

Malaysian bloggers boleh

I looked at some blog directories and compared the number of Malaysian bloggers with that of 5 other neighbouring countries, namely, Brunei, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

The results are quite impressive.

Here are the figures for each directory:

A. RICE BOWL JOURNALS

1. Brunei - 30
   
2. Indonesia - 251
   
3. Malaysia - 855
   
4. Philippines - 1560
   
5. Singapore - 858
   
6. Thailand - 53

Malaysia is ranked 3rd here. The number of Filipino bloggers is quite impressive. Probably due to the fact that a lot of them are Americans whose Ethnic origin is the Philippines.

B. DIARIST

1. Brunei - 0
   
2. Indonesia - 11
   
3. Malaysia - 109
   
4. Philippines - 140
   
5. Singapore - 98
   
6. Thailand - 27

Malaysia is ranked 2nd here

C. MISOHONI: BEST BLOGS IN ASIA

1. Brunei - 7
   
2. Indonesia - 0
   
3. Malaysia - 206
   
4. Philippines - 128
   
5. Singapore - 248
   
6. Thailand - 15

Malaysia is also ranked 2nd here.

4. BLOGFLUX

1. Brunei - 11
   
2. Indonesia - 297
   
3. Malaysia - 578
   
4. Philippines - 588
   
5. Singapore - 319
   
6. Thailand - 117

Malaysia is ranked 2nd again here.

5. BLOG EXPLOSION

1. Brunei - 5
   
2. Indonesia - 76
   
3. Malaysia - 556
   
4. Philippines - 598
   
5. Singapore - 370
   
6. Thailand - 26

Malaysia is ranked 2nd again here.

That's an overall average ranking of 2.2. The Philippines comes out on top with an average rank of 1.4. Singapore has an overall average ranking of 2.4.

NOTE:
- The number of blogs are correct as of 6th April, 2007.
- This is not a measure of the quality of blogs.

Malaysian Bloggers Boleh.

What chocolate moment do you have

Going through the blogosphere, I come across unique and creative blogs. Well,
Comfort Fantasies is the blog of a chocoholic (the blogger admits it) and the blogger has an interesting way of categorisings the various posts - as dark, white or milk chocolate day/ moment, depending on the mood.

I can make out that Dark chocolate = sad
White chocolate = happy
Milk chocolate = neither sad nor happy. In the blogger's own words: "Isn't dark, yet it isn't a happy moment in time either."

Interesting way of categorising the post, don't you agree.

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

Guy with the big smile

Are you watching American Idol? 

Every week I keep expecting one person to be voted off but he's still there smiling his sweet smile. In case you are wondering who I haven't guess who I am talking about, it' Sanjaya. 

I was reading a post "Sweet Sanjaya..how could you?" on Jerri's journal, and totally agree with her. He's good but not that good. I keep wondering "who's voting for him?" 

 BTW, Jerri a mother of 2 and she blogs at "A crack n' life". She has written a book titled "Sleep is Sacred: Sleep Begets Sleep". E-mail her (jareason@gmail.com) to get a copy.

Trying to lose weights - Avoid scales

I was going through this health and fitness blog "Building A Healthy Body, One Day At A Time" (yeah I know it's a long title), when I came across this interesting post - "Dump The Scale"

A lot of people trying to lose weight will religiously climb on their scales after every workout or in the morning, to see whether they have lost any weight. According to bodyforlifer26, watching the scales too closely can actually discourage you from tying to lose weight. She says "

Toss the scale. If you can't completly toss it, at least only pull it out once every two weeks or so and don't rely to heavily on what it says."

Actually that kind of makes sense. Do you agree?

I have actually experienced it myself. In Kedah, I had started swimming twice every week and was quite disappointed when I found out that I hadn't lost any weight at all. In the end I just didn't look at the scales at all.

Online opportunities site

You will find that there are so many technology sites out there promising to help you earn money that I sometimes say "not again" when coming across another similar site. I was planning to create a satire site making fun of these sites and had even registered my domain name Adamok.net, when I had a change of mind.

This was because after going through some of the sites trying to find a way to criticise them, I found out that many had really interesting, useful and original posts. Dustin's blog, Little America.us seeks to provide tested revenue ideas for "the little guy" (like me). However, unlike other similar blogs, this blog seems refreshingly neat. I realised that this is due to the fact that it is not plastered with ads of all kinds, unlike some blogs (that includes me). One of his side bar is totally empty except for the words "Help me put something pretty here." Think you can help him with that?

His recent post "Arrington Changes View on PPP" is very interesting to me as another Payperpost postie. Techcrunch is probably jealous that they are going to lose out advertising to small bloggers like me.

Tip Tail blogs about anything

Tip Tail is the blog of Cynthia, a blogger from Salt Lake City, Utah. She blog about almost anything and a lot about her dogs. She has four dogs - Chase, Levi, Angel and Lucy. She also has 2 cats - Littles and Phoebe. It's hard to find people who love both cats and dogs.

I was reading here latest post "Working from Home Rocks" and it is about her trip to the dentist.

Like millions of people around the World, I hate going to the dentist (sorry! Uncle Megh but I prefer to visit you at home too). The last time I went to a dentist was to have my wisdom tooth extracted and it hurt like hell. Read my old post here.

Yeah! I agree with you Cynthia, working from home rocks. Actually I have no choice.

Introducing Ghetto Barbie

I would like to introduce my readers to Danyel aka Ghetto Barbie. The first thing I noticed, when I visited her blog was the big graffiti style logo. Certainly eye catching.

She has 3 themes that you can choose from. The default is the Easter layout but I found that the easiest to read text was the "Erin Go Brah" theme, which incidentally looked like the colors from the Irish or Indian flags.

This 24 year old stays with her boyfriend Mark, baby son Tegan, Mark,s father and (you won't believe it) 25 pets. Go to her blog to find out. I was not sure what a bearded dragon was and had to look it up on Wikipedia.

You sure meet lot of interesting people on the net.

Interesting personal blog

A friend told me that my blog has become less interesting after I starting writing about technology, business and e-commerce. According to her, it was more interesting when most of my posts were about my personal life.

I don't know why but I too prefer personal blogs over blogs with technology or any other specific theme. Somehow I feel more involved. "Where’s Mommy’s Prozac?" is such a blog. The 30+ mother to two teenage girls and a teenage stepson writes that

"My life is all about drama, drama, drama."

One of the posts I really found deeply touching was about the death of her brother - "In Memory of My Brother".

I also found out that we share the same interest in music. Most of her favourites are also mine too.

Memories of KL

Was just going through Tracy Tan's Blog "Wahseh!". Her posts about life in Kuala Lumpur and looking at the pictures brought back fond memories.

Ever since we arrived in the UK, our social life has suffered a great deal - what with the kids, my wife's research work plus the fact that we are living on a budget. After 8 the only places open here are the nightclubs and a few expensive restaurants. Makes us really miss KL with it's 24 hour mamak outlets.

Is AZ Dana Wacky

AZ Dana (not sure whether it's her real name) is another blogger I recently got to know. She blogs at Azdana.com and claims to be wacky in real life (I believe you, I believe you) and she wanted to translate it into this blog of hers.

She has been blogging for a relatively short time but her blog is way better than some who have been blogging for years. I like the neat tidy look of her blog which is not wacky at all. Wanted to know more about this blogger but clicking on the about link doesn't give me a clue. You probably want to put something there AzDana. Here list of links are empty too and I hope that I will be the first one she puts up. he he

Tell me what you think when you try the Butter tea.

Do you like classic rock

Classic rock is my kind of music. Unfortunately not many of my friends are into this genre of music. I was lucky that my wife loves the same kind of music I do.

I do listen to the new songs on the radio but if you asked me to name any new singer or band that I really liked, I couldn't come up with any. I simply don't feel a connection.


Give me Led Zeppelin any day. Listening to Nazareth's Love hurts can send shivers down my spine.

It was a great moment when I was finally able to watch the legendary band Deep Purple live, when they last visited Malaysia. It was amazing to see these guys (some of whom are grandfathers) still rocking.

Going through the blogosphere, I find that I am not alone. There are a lot of classic rock lovers out there. Olivia from Canada is one of them. She blogs at "The Funky Olive". Learned that they actually play classic rock in her office. I really envy her. In my last place of work, I was the only guy who liked classic rock music. One guys actually told me that listening to it was giving him a headache.

Anyway, read what happens when a temp comes in to their office and tries to switch the music to "sappy easy listening bla bla" music here.

Related posts:
- Farhan singing the blues on AF4
- Led Zeppelin and the evil one

Tags: classic rock music

Kim's life in a blog

Kim Darrell is another blogger i got to know through Payperpost forums. She a 38 years old mother who loves sewing and knitting. She blogs at
Life in General. I got to know of two really interesting tech blogs through her blog:
1. Tap Blog, which has loads of Internet and Web 2.0 news. and
2. Mom's Gadget - about gadgets, gizmos and working from home, from a mum's perspective.

This process of jumping from one blog to another though links is called Blog hopping. In fact, if you click those links you will be blog hopping too. I do it quite frequently. On the other hand, other people usually have a few blogs they regularly frequent and don't blog hop much.

Do you blog hop too?

Blog with all the wacky news

I read hundred of blog posts everyday, blog hopping from one to the another.

It's not often that I find a blog interesting enough to stay for a while and browse through past posts. Well, Rebecca's Snark the News Blog kept me occupied for nearly 20 minutes, which in Blogosphere terms, is a very long time to spend on a blog. It has a simple layout but has loads of crazy and unusual news like "Burglar Calls Police to Help Break In Church", which I initially thought, was made up but later confirmed to be true.

Just proves that you don't need to have fancy graphics and hi-fi layouts to attract visitors.

She even has a weekly contest on her blog. Go over there to find out more about it.

Working from home blog

There is nothing new with running a business from home. However, running a Global business from home is something altogether. go get global news & views is a blog that "a bird’s eye view on running your global business from home". The blogger doesn't identify himself/ herself on the blog but he/ she has a lot of great tips for those working from home.

As a "working from home" father, this blog post on "Balancing work and play" was quite relevant to me. I totally agree with what the blogger has to say:

If you’re feeling like something is missing from your work at home life, like you were meant for more than this, maybe all you need is a break from your online life!