A couple of years ago, I won a Cybershot Camera because I participated in a Honda contest. The camera was good. Honda was good. So I figured freebies from Honda just to participate in a survey was a good thing.

Wrong.

Well, actually, I don’t know if the survey was good, but I DO KNOW that the company (Planet Pulse) that conducted this email survey has demonstrated they are champions at the art of pissing off customers.

Here’s how Planet Pulse pissed me in the face.

The survey starts off politely by thanking you for giving them 15 minutes of your time. Actually, I think what they mean to say is “Thank you for giving us the opportunity to piss you off”.

The first question itself is misleading.

Reading that, you’d immediately think of all your pals, uncles and aunties who work in the industries stated right? After all, you WANT to be as helpful AND cooperative as you possibly can in the survey, right?

So I checked 2 categories : Advertising and Healthcare (although I pretty much knew people who worked in every category).

Then it happened. They pissed me in the face.

Huh? I thought.

This can’t be right. I then hit the back button and tried a different category. This time I made it to the next question. It seems that if you check certain categories, they tell you you are a pariah and they will spit you out of the survey.

“Go away. Quit. We don’t want you’re shitty participation”.

No… I won’t go away.

The next question. Select “male” or “female”.

I selected “male” and made it through. Then I thought… hang on… let’s try being a female instead. Hit the back button and selected “female”. True enough :

Okay… they’ve just pissed off half of the world’s population.

Oh what the heck. Let’s go on to the next question :

Decided to be honest. After all, my grey hair is a dead giveaway.
WT Fish!!!! Rejected Again???!

Oh what the heck. I’m a sucker for punishment. Let’s see if they piss me off again. I back-tracked and lied. I took a couple years of my age and Voila! their survey is too dumb like them to know that I’m lying! Lying my way through that question then brings me to the next…

I answered honestly “I can’t recall”.

So since I said “I can’t recall”, they told me to go piss off again.

Now… I tell you…

Sure, you hope that you might at least win a freebie by participating in the survey, but heck you ARE giving them your time you know. Planet Pus (oops sorry… pun VERY intended) must either have morons OR insensitive jerks OR BOTH employed in their research and promotions dept.

Hey Planet PUS. You DON’T tell people to PISS OFF in the middle of a survey. That’s like asking people to come into your restaurant and half-way through their meal, telling them to get the hell out because they said “salt” when you wanted to hear “pepper”.

Okay… so I don’t fit the demographic that you’re targetting, but the least you can do is LET ME finish the survey and PRETEND that I’m in the running for a freebie.

Okay maybe you jerk heads don’t know how to conduct a survey. Here’s a couple of tips :

- If you really don’t want folks who are not in your targetted demographics to participate, then for pete’s sake STATE the pre-conditions for the survey BEFORE you get people all pumped up. That way, if I read that you’re NOT looking for hunky dudes over 40, I’ll just skip the whole damn survey.

- A survey is a golden opportunity to gather data. So what if I’m not in your demographics target this time round? Why not collect my data anyway and store it in your stupid database? You never know when you’re going to have a client who WANTS to target hunky 40-somethings in the future. What you gonna do then - piss off ALL the under 40 non-hunky idiots who are stupid enough to participate in your idiotic survey?

- Okay, so let’s say I answer question #2 and immediately you know I’m not in your targetted demographics. Why not set up a series of questions that probe what my interests are for future use? Come to think of it, why not ask me the damn questions anyway, but just file my participation as “N/A”? I don’t have to know. You don’t have tell me what you do with my survey. Why do you have to piss me off half way?

Can you imagine how many people would have taken the survey and after 14 minutes and reaching the last question, that stupid “reject” screen pops up telling you to go fly kites? Wouldn’t that be piss off your participants?

Planet Pulse, you truly are from the Planet Pus!

[there… rant complete… adrenaline rush achieved]

Tags: planet pulse

http://themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/breaking-views/35095-whose-fault-is-it-that-leads-to-the-high-mortality-lim-sue-goan

H1N1 is going to kill the whole of Malaysia because we’ve got incompetent people in government. It’s up to us to make sure our children and families don’t get infected. Weeks ago, I began to get concerned and I thought I was bordering on paranoia.

Not anymore.

My kids wear masks to school and carry small bottles of hand sanitizers.

They don’t go to school on Fridays to lessen potential exposure.

We wear masks when we go out.

I carry a bottle of diluted Dettol everywhere now. If we eat out, I spray the table top with the solution and give it a wipe. I dip cutlery and even straws in a glass of hot water before we use them.

We’ve stopped going out for our nightly mall walk for the time being.

I may cut down my kids’ school days to 3 days or even take them out entirely if need be. They’re top 10 students, so I don’t worry about them catching up with their lessons. If we wait for our stupid government to take action, we’ll be visiting our kids in the cemetery - unless we land there first. This stupid government of ours says they’re going to launch a huge campaign to inform the public soon. It’s 51 lives too late (that’s the latest death toll as I write this).

We were supposed to go watch “Aliens in the Attic” this Friday, but we’ve cancelled. Can you imagine being in an enclosed cinema with 300 other people? All you need is one single moron who doesn’t want to waste his ticket sitting in there, coughing and sneezing and potentially killing all 300 innocent people.

Am I being paranoid? Probably.

But in this case, I’d rather over-react than NOT do anything.

My family and I decided to carry out and experiment over August and September. We did this because every year without fail, our customer base dips beginning September. I don’t know why - maybe it’s the weather, maybe people just don’t like eating in September, maybe there are lots of holidays in September. Whatever the reason, Sara, Sam, Mum and I decided to prepare ourselves for the slow months by trying to save as much as possible. I suggested that we try eating at home as much as possible.

You know how it goes. Even though we’re in the food business and there is ALWAYS delicious, home cooked food at the end of the day, the kids (me included) like to eat out once in a while. Well that “once in a while” eventually became :

• KFC on Friday afternoons after school
• Wednesday evening at the Food Court because Sam would come home from school activities late and it’s easier to just eat out and let someone else wash up
• Saturday dinner after our regular trip to the mall.
• Sunday dinner because it’s Sunday

Then there would always be one excuse or another to grab a snack once or twice a week, and these snacks would eventually end up costing as much as a dinner for four.

We decided that other than our weekend meals, we would eat at home. Each meal we ate at home allowed us to save at least RM25 to RM45. At the end of two months of eating at home, I calculated (based on our average eat-out bill, 3 times per week) that we saved RM905! Whoa! That’s RM450 a month just for eating out and snacking. And that’s only eating at my kids’ favorite budget places like McDonalds, KFC etc. Imagine how much we would be spending if we were in the habit of snacking at more fancy restaurants.

So the whole point of this post is this. If you think you’ve got it tough trying to make ends meet, try looking at what you’re spending to fill your tummy.

We’ve decided to keep eating in. At an average of RM400 savings a month, it adds up to RM4800 a year! That money would be better off in our holiday piggy bank or in the children’s education fund.

Think about it. Eat in and save. It justs takes a little self-control!

Tags: home budget, saving on food, eating out, food costs

Image from Sausagewars.com WHAT’S good for your penis is also good for your heart. That’s what health industry sources are finding out. Consultant urologist Dr Peter Ng Eng Pin says chest pains used to be one of the only outward indications of heart disease. But now, erectile dysfunction (ED) is the new warning sign of underlying vascular problems. “The penis is a dipstick to your health. When that is down, your health is down as well. “In many studies in was reported that more than 50 per cent of men with ED developed a heart condition within three years. “It used to be the other way around, where people with heart problems had ED. Now, we’re learning that ED is a warning for more serious diseases.” ED is an early manifestation of the blood vessel damage caused by high blood pressure, diabetes and other heart disease risk factors.

Well all I can say is this is really good news. If this article is true, then I am far from having vascular problems. Every time I look at my wife proves it.

Tags: medical problems, heart problems, ED

The Chinese Hungry Ghost Month usually falls in the month of August. As a Christian, this is not supposed to be of any significance to me, but let me share my experience with you.

On the eve of Merdeka seven years ago in 2001, while we were on our way home from the mall, I was driving across the Kota Bridge. There was a power failure and the street lights were not lit. As we were quarter of the way across the bridge, I looked over to the GoldCourse Hotel on my right which seemed so beautiful in the darkness of the night. Next thing I knew, there was a sickeningly loud crash and my head smacked into the steering wheel. I greeted my first car accident with a loud “Aiyooooh…S**T! What am I going to do now!”.

It was the seventh month. I didn’t take notice of the fact back then.

In 2002, while on our way back from the mall again, there was a loud squeel from the engine. Then the air-con died. The compressor was shot. I figured it must have been because the night before I had to rev my engine through 100 metres of flood water. Co-incidence perhaps but it was the seventh month.

The following year (2003), driving home again after visiting a friend, there was a loud explosion followed by a “ketak… ketak… ketak” sound. Stopping by the side of the road, I found my left rear tyre flat. What made it flat? A stubby bolt. Not a sharp one mind you - a stubby bolt. I thought it must have been because I had this habit of over-inflating my tires but it was the seventh month.

In 2004, the squeel came back suddenly one morning. Quick as lightning, I turned off my air-con, braved the heat and shot off to my air-con service centre. It could have been the air-con compressor they said, but fortunately this time it was just the fan that died which caused the engine to overwork. It cost RM100 plus to fix, and at least it was cheaper than replacing the compressor, but it was the seventh month.

2005 saw my engine overheating. It wasn’t the radiator. It wasn’t the thermostat. It was a very simple but expensive-to-fix engine gasket. RM500 down the drain to fix it. Seventh month.

Then in 2006 while happily driving near my house, there was suddenly a “click-clack-click-clack” sound. Drove home and checked underneath my car. There was an 8 inch wire that pierced the side of my right rear tyre. Not directly into the flat surface of the tire mind you - it was the SIDE wall of the tyre. If it was a seven-inch wire, I would truly have freaked out.

So before every seventh month since 2002, even though I have spared NO expense to service my car to make sure nothing goes wrong, it has. I wondered how long it would go on.

Then in 2007, I had an encounter with the devil himself. You guessed it… it was the seventh month.

BUT… I think that was the final song and this year, (shhh… don’t say it loud) I have managed to go through the seventh month without any problems. Could it REALLY be a coincidence that last year’s encounter with the Devil himself was the SEVENTH and perhaps the last???

No I won’t sell my car. I’ve promised I will give it to my son when he turns 18. I also didn’t want to admit I lost to a supersitious belief. Anyway… I’m NOT supposed to believe that these things happened because of the seventh month! Thinking back, I wonder if all these were caused by my subconscious… knowing at the back of my mind that it was the seventh month.

How’s that for a story huh? I swear… it’s true. No bluffing.

Every August, my kids will come home singing Merdeka songs that they learnt in school. Sara came home one day and asked if I could find the lyrics to the song “Warisan” written by Sudirman Hj. Arshad who in my opinion is the greatest Malaysian lyricist.

Anyway, after downloading the song and playing it, my mind immediately recalled this beautiful, emotive love song for our beautiful country called Malaysia.

As we go through the pains of rediscovering democracy, let’s not look at the color of our skin but look at our hearts. We are ALL Malaysians, brothers and sisters on earth - equally loved by God.

Warisan (Heritage)
Sudirman Hj. Arshad (1954 - 1992)

Disini lahirnya sebuah cinta
Yang murni abadi sejati
Disini tersemai cita cita
Bercambah menjadi warisan

Here a love is born,
Noble, eternal and pure,
Here hopes and dreams are sown
To blossom into a nation’s heritage…

Andai ku terbuang tak diterima
Andai aku disingkirkan
Kemana harusku bawakan
Kemana harusku semaikan cinta ini

If ever I am rejected, unaccepted
If ever I am left by the wayside
Where would I take,
Where would I sow this love of mine

Betapa
Dibumi ini ku melangkah
Keutara selatan timur dan barat
Ku jejaki

Wherever on this earth
Should I walk,
To the North, South, East and West,
Should I travel…

Aku bukanlah seorang perwira
Gagah menghunus senjata
Namun hati rela berjuang
Walau dengan cara sendiri
Demi cinta ini

I am not a warrior,
Bravely going into battle,
But my heart is willing to fight
In my own way
For the love of my country…

Ku ingin kotakan seribu janji
Sepanjang kedewasaan ini
Ku ingin sampaikan pesanan
Aku lah penyambung warisan

I will fullfil my promise
Through all my life
To declare that
I am the a child of My Country

Please excuse my unqualified translation to English.

Happy Merdeka Malaysia…

Tags: merdeka,, malaysia,, sudirman,, warisan

I’ve been meaning to write this for a long time now, but I’ve never written a politically motivated post before. I originally wanted to title my post “Why I would vote for Anwar Ibrahim”… but being always behind time is not a good way to write anything constructive.

In any case, my reason for writing “Why I would vote for Anwar Ibrahim” was to get things off my chest. Talking to friends and acquaiantences is okay, but I figured I might as well shoot off my mouth for once about how I feel all over the Internet. Perhaps the high-and-mighty-nose-in-the-clouds people in Parliament will somehow read.

To tell you the truth, my reasons for “Why I would vote for Anwar Ibrahim” is not really because of support for him or for PKR, but because of my growing disgust with Barisan Nasional.

I can go on and on, spouting my half past six political views which can easily be shot down by a half drunken, money-power-and-sex maniac MP, so I will just state some of the things that have made me fed up of Barisan Nasional :

• Rising fuel and food prices. Ordinary folks are struggling to keep their heads above water but we see obvious mismanagement of public funds and politicians getting fat living the good life. No, not just the politicians - even people we know who are well connected are sharing in the plunder. No need to state specifics. Just look around and you will have your own story to tell.
• One particular moron ex-Minister turned unwitting porn star in particular disgusts me. After years of cheating on his wife, he dares to declare that at least has the “moral courage” to admit what he did. Yeah… so if he becomes the leader of one of the biggest parties in Malaysia, he’s telling everyone “Hey… look at me! I screwed around behind my wife’s back for years. I was caught, but heck I’m sorry… I’m still a good guy… next time round I’ll check for hidden cameras. For now, vote for ME!”. I dare say this is one of the major reasons I would vote for Anwas Ibrahim. If a senior Minister who’s fairly decent and responsible on the outside is actually is actually enjoying the “fruits” of his position, I can’t imagine the other lesser “leaders” who don’t even look half as intelligent. What kind of message are we sending to our children if such a person leads a major party in this country?
• Another ex (now dead) MP who “allegedly” built a palace without approval right in the midst of people struggling to make ends meet. This is just the kind of arrogance and greed that we hard working souls are tired of.
• A growing arrogance exists everywhere - from the management of local town councils to the administration of schools. They don’t have to say anything. Their actions scream “Hey… I work for the BN government. I can do anything I like” and they continue to rub salt in the wounded pride of hard-working folks with policies and inefficiency.
• Morons who keep shouting “ketuanan Melayu”. Look, before you go and stick voodoo pins in a doll, I love and hate Malays, Chinese and Indians equally. I believe there are as many idiotic Malays as there are Chinese and Indians. But I’m tired of having to explain to my children that there are some things that they cannot say to their friends even if it’s the truth because somewhere, somehow, there is an unwritten law that a certain race must always be protected from “sensitive” issues.

Hey BN… I was born in Malaysia. I am a living breathing Malaysian. I want EQUAL rights. After 51 years of Merdeka, we are still afraid to talk to each other openly and honestly. Now, all the feelings of frustration and hate have come to the surface and threaten to explode in another May 13.

So let me relate a small incident that tells me why this country is in the state that it’s in. An ex-colleague of mine once asked me to join the MCA. I replied that I wasn’t in the least interested in politics and I didn’t think I could serve the community. His reply?

“Hey man… you think I and all the others joined *** to serve the community? Podah man… I joined because I can make contacts with other businessmen. Now whenever there is a project, we are the first to hear of the opportunity so we get to make money. I scratch my back you scratch mine lah”

So that got me thinking… this is why Malaysia is going down the drain.

In any case, I digress. This post is titled “2 Ugly Durians And The Permatang Pauh By Election”. Here’s the reason for the unusual title.

2 nights ago, my inquisitive children Sam and Sara asked me who “Anwar Ibrahim” was. I explained who he was and why he was now in the news almost daily. I tried to explain the problems with our present government as best as I could in simple terms they could understand.

They asked me “If Anwar was in jail years ago, doesn’t that make him a bad man?”

Followed by “So, why do we want him to be a leader now?”

I almost pengsan at the question. How to answer? So the first thing that came to mind was durians. I asked them “Imagine we have 2 durians. We open one and find that it’s full of worms. The other one also looks just as ugly from the outside and everyone also says that it’s ugly, but we don’t know for sure. What do you think we should do? Should we just throw away the second one away?”

Sara, my smartie-pants 8 year old quickly said “No-lah! Why so stupid. We already know the first durian is full of worms we can throw away lah. But just because the second durian looks ugly on the outside doesn’t mean that it’s really bad on the inside. We have to open it and see for ourselves lah. Only then we will know for sure mah…”

And so my dear friends… for all my life, I have lived and tolerated a durian that grows uglier by the day and is so full of worms it has rotted to the core. I now have a choice to try another durian that may be beautiful inside although it looks just as ugly on the outside.

Life is about making decisions. And sometimes you have to take risks.

I’ve had enough of the present ugly durian called Barisan, thank you.

Well, time seems to be slipping through my fingers lately. Been so busy with our home based catering business and backend work on my other sites that I missed a really big piece of news.

It would seem that Clickbank now accepts Malaysian accounts.

I was browsing some local sites when I happened to scroll over a banner. Usually, I ignore ads, but I happened to like this banner and rolled over it. What surprised me was that the affiliate link was a clickbank hop link.

I thought to myself, “Now that can’t be right… This guy is a local fella. How come he has a Clickbank account?”

I surfed more local sites and started to notice more and more Clickbank hoplinks.

So I moseyed along to Clickbank site and tried to register and “Wahlo! Malaysia appears in the drop down box!!!!”

So I went… “Well Duhhhhhh…. you’re late again Andrew”

This is really fantabulous news!

I’ve always been dissapointed that we Malaysians could not register with Clickbank. They are after all the world biggest marketplace for buying and selling online products. I believe Malaysia was previously on their list of high risk countries, but obviously things have changed. Thanks to whoever helped make that change.

I’d rate this new at #3 after Paypal allowing withdrawals to Malaysian Visa Debit Cards and Adsense allowing withdrawals to Malaysia via Western Union.

So how can Clickbank make a difference to making money online?

Well for starters, any additional revenue stream is always welcome because it’s never ever a good thing to rely on only one revenue stream (for most folks it’s Adsense).

Second, with Clickbank you get to offer your visitors lots more options in terms of products and information.

Third, we can go full force into affiliate marketing and create websites based on clickbank products, where we were limited to building websites around Adsense and contextual ad revenue model.

I’m going to make time to see what brilliant money making ventures Clickbank offers me….

Exabytes - a world class web hosting company is organizing a contest in conjunction with Malaysia’s 51st Anniversary of its independence. It’s a really simple contest - all you have to do it count the number of flags and logos in the picture below and create a simple slogan to win a Sony Walkman Video MP3 Player.

Here’s where you can enter the contest. and if you don’t mind, I’d like the nifty MP3 player too. Just remember to include my name (Andrew Shim) and email address (andrewshimatyahoodotcom) in the referrer fields.

Best of luck.

I ALWAYS experiment with Adsense ad placements and formats. This is to counter ad blindness as much as it is to optimize Adsense as much as possible. Well in January 2008, I found that the half-banner which once used to perform pretty well on my main Adsense website started to suck major lemons. eCPM was going down the tubes and so was CTR. I decided to kill the half banner and replaced it with the large rectangle format. Now what happened since has really surprised me.

Although purists would crucify me for plastering a whole slab of Adsense on my homepage, that fella has been out performing ALL my ad blocks on ALL pages collectively. The thing is as this is happening, I’ve found that the bounce rate for this page has increased in tandem with the rise in earnings. Obviously people are arriving at this page, seeing this whopper of an ad block and just clicking on it. The sorry victim in all this is Kontera, which I use for all my sub pages.

Now, I expected that earnings from Kontera would dip with the rise in clicks on the large rectangle Adsense block, but it has actually crashed and gone erratic. The chart below shows my daily earnings in the last 2 weeks or so :

What was happening was unbelievable… I was starting to see earnings of 10 cents for 10 clicks or more! Now that’s bad. Where I used to be able to earn an average of 15 to 20 cents per click, I’ve been seeing a major increase in 1 cent or less per clicks the last few months. The peaks you see in the chart above are nothing to brag about. We’re talking about less than $1 here. To illustrate how bad Kontera is performing now, I have only just managed to pass the $100 mark at the end of May 2008. That’s 5 months to reach $100 - an average of $20 per month or 66 cents a day! Since this has been happening over the course of a few months, it is telling me that one or more of the following is true :

• Kontera’s advertiser pool is shrinking - hence the low eCPM and EPC.
• Kontera is somehow able to see my visitors prefer clicking on Adsense so they’re punishing me for giving priority to Adsense (this is a conspiracy theory. I cannot prove it)
• It’s just market forces at play and market forces are saying my site deserves 1 cent clicks.

Now it’s not pride here. I cannot accept the third possibility BECAUSE since deploying the large rectangle Adsense block, my EPC has actually increased by almost 60%. To see if the market as a whole was weakening, I decided to give LinkWorth a try. I’ll talk more about LinkWorth in a separate post later, but in the 3 weeks or so that I’ve been with LinkWorth, I am very pleased with my earnings so far.

So the bottom line is… I am not going to waste my web real estate on Kontera anymore. I’ve been patient enough. Five months is enough I think. Later this week, I’m going to convert all the pages that were once reserved for Kontera to Linkworth.

Thanks for paying for my hotel stay in Genting, but I gotta say Adios Kontera!

How the fuel price increase affects our business
As far as our catering business is concerned, we are expecting prices from our suppliers to shoot up this week. An estimate of 40% increase is not out of the question. The question is how do we act responsibly and increase our price without chasing away our customers. We’ve come up with an approach that might work.

From day one of starting our home catering biz to 31 December 2007, we maintained our price at RM200 per pax per month. Expecting a fuel increase this year, we increased our price to RM220 for new customers who joined us from 01 January 2008 onwards. We maintained our old price for old customers (those who joined before 01 Jan 2007).

Now it looks like our new price of RM220 may not be sufficient to cover the huge increase in fuel price. So, we’ve decided to increase out price to RM240 per pax per month. This is for 3 dishes (one meat, one veggie and one side dish). However, this increase may be too drastic for some of our fixed income customers, so we’ve also decided to offer a budget package from July 01 onwards which will consist of one meat, one veggie and one soup at RM200 per pax per month. In effect, this means that if customers choose to pay the old price, they will have to settle for less. We’re still not soo sure if our new pricing will work out, because it might take about one month for suppliers to increase their prices.

How the fuel price increase affects our family budget
Obviously, there is going to be cost cutting. Thankfully, since my wife and I work full time at home, we have full control over household expenses. The fuel price increase should see our petrol bill go up RM150 per month and our electricity bill by about RM50. We haven’t taken into account other stuff that will obviously be affected by the fuel price increase. So what we’ve decided to do :

• Pay off our remaining credit card debt of about RM4K as soon as possible. Thankfully, if all goes according to the government’s plan, I should be one of the first to receive my fuel subsidy because my road tax is up for renewal on 02 July 2008. I also have a motorbike that has been sitting and collecting dust for about 3 years now that I will sell. This should bring in an additional RM1K - RM1.5K. We’ll then bite the bullet and increase our monthly credit card payment to around RM700 per month. If all goes according to plan, we will clear this our credit card debt in about 4 months.
• Repair, service or clean all our electrical equipment. Clogged fans and refrigerators that aren’t running at optimum performance will be power-guzzlers that eat into our family budget.
• Cut our weekend trips to KL/PJ malls to once per week instead of the current 2-3 times. This should save us around RM100 - RM150 per month in petrol, toll and parking fees.
• Spend more of our evenings doing family things instead of going to the mall. I like enjoying the free aircond at the mall, but this is going to cost more from now on, so better to strip half naked and enjoy a noisy game of badminton with my kids from now on. Or jump into the kiddie pool with them or maybe finally start jogging to lose weight. All in all, those nightly trips to the mall always end up with us spending more on snacks and impulse buying.
• More meals at home. Making sure the family fills up our stomachs at dinner time instead of half-full and then having an excuse to go for supper. Thank God we are in the food business so there is ALWAYS left over from catering that is more than enough to feed us.
• Cut all unnecessary expenses like newspapers (can read it online), weekly trips to the arcade for the kids and soft drinks when we eat out.

There are lots more ways we can cut costs. No we don’t need to go drastic, but we figured it’s a good way to get to grips with the crazy increases we will soon experience all around us. It’s time to “ikat perut” guys. I hope all goes well for you.

Tags: Fuel price, petrol increase, fuel hike, home budget, family budget

I run a home based catering business, manage more websites than I can handle in addition to being a driver cum homemaker to my kids… and what do I go and do? I set up an online store… that’s what.

Something had to give while I was scrounging for time to set up my online store, so it was HomeWithAndrew, then my other websites. When I first started working from home, starting an online store was always on the cards. I just never got enough motivation to get myself off off my ass and do it. Bad example to set for a work-at-home Dad. Yeah.

If I had kept to the schedule I set five years ago, I would have already set up 3 online stores. But who can predict the future. I never knew that running the catering business would take up soooo much of my time. It’s a vicious cycle of sorts. The more my catering business grows, the more time I have to put in, which means I spend less time on my online money making. But the original plan was to build my online network to a level where we would NOT have to depend on the catering business.

So why would I go and set up and online store when I already have too much on my plate? Well, it’s part of my strategy to NEVER depend on only ONE or TWO sources of income. My online store is a long-term plan to always diversify.

CoolCat t-shirts is a culmination of everything that I love : art, designing, web development, coding and t-shirts. I’m still learning the ropes, managing my store, but CoolCat t-shirts has brought me full circle. Ever since I was a small boy, I loved drawing on my old t-shirts. When I became a teenager, I would make simple templates and printed one-color designs on t-shirts. I experimented with all sorts of t-shirt printing techniques - even potato prints and t-shirt crayons! Then when I was in secondary school, I learnt the art of making silk-screen blocks, which was so addictive that I started a small t-shirt printing biz with a friend after school. The business didn’t fly. My partner had other plans and she was the one running the business side of things. So my t-shirt dreams were put on hold. Now almost twenty years later, the wonder of the Internet is making me salivate.

From my research, the secret to Cafepress success is patience. That, I have lots of experience. It’s took many years of patient building before my websites started to make substantial money. I plan to set up a few more stores and will probably pass on the designing tasks to my wife and daughter who thankfully share my passion for designing.

Anyway… I’d like to invite you to visit my new online store :

So here I am with my plate overflowing and I’m piling on more. And people say I’m so lucky I don’t have to work so hard. Yeah. Right.

Tags: t-shirts,, cafepress,, coolcattshirts

The first year we were in business - when we didn’t really have a lot of money coming in from my websites - we were on the verge of panic. It was the first time we really felt the effects of the balik kampung exodus. That year, we were left with less than ten customers during the Chinese New Year month. Thank God we were still holding on to our day jobs - albeit part-time.

After 5 years in the home catering business, we’ve come to accept the CNY month income drop as part and parcel of our business. That’s why we’re thankful that our online income keeps things stable.

From day one of being full-time work-at-homers, we decided that we would NOT rely on our online income to sustain our family. There are just too many variables that can swing against your website(s) which will ultimately affect your income. So we work hard and make sure that our home catering business pays the bills and keeps food on the table. Our catering business is also a heck of a lot more predictable than search engine mood swings and their ever changing algorithms. So despite receiving a healthy income from my websites, we ONLY dip into our Google Piggy Bank for the extras during low months like Chinese New Year. Thankfully, December’s Adsense payout was a fat one and came in via Western Union just in time for our CNY shopping.

So like it or not, Google has been putting the “Happy” in “Chinese New Year” for our family the last five years. So I guess what I’m trying to say is this - unless you are prepared for the erratic ups and downs of earning an online income, I strongly suggest you keep your day job and save your income from Adsense, Kontera etc for those rainy days (especially if you have a family).

Tags: Google Adsense, Adsense, Home Based Business

Well this sucks. This is the first withdrawal to my new Public Bank debit card and it gets stuck in pending mode. And it’s a fairly large amount too which I withdrew on February 1st. At least Paypal saw fit to inform us instead of letting us hang in mid air. Then again, I’m pretty sure they’ve been deluged with queries about the prolonged “Pending” status.

Tags: Paypal

At that time, I figured it didn’t hurt because the image was just about 1KB in size, so I did nothing. However, this kayu website (a very big website with thousands of Malaysian users) started hotlinking to multiple images and was beginning to eat up my bandwidth. So I decided to block all hot-linking.

It’s pretty easy to block people from hot-linking to your images. Just add the following code to your .htaccess file :

This should effectively block all those dartardly evil doers who don’t have the decency to create their own images but instead choose to steal not only the image, but to eat up my bandwidth while stealing!

Tags: Stop Hot-Linking

Here’s something you might not be aware of - not all bots are good. I’ve been having problems with one particular bot this past 2 months. Last month, when I noticed a huge spike in hits, I peeked into my logs and noticed a bot called FunWebProducts hitting my sites and eating my bandwidth. First, I thought “cool… this bot is picking up my content”. Then whammo… I checked to see where this bot was from and it turns out FunWebProducts is NO GOOD.

Bad bots do harm to you in many ways :

• Some bots are designed to scrape your content - copy and steal your content.
• They eat up bandwidth - remember you pay for your bandwidth.
• If they hit you often enough, they can choke your bandwidth and real visitors will have problems accessing your site.
• The make your server logs files look like one long piece of s**t. It’s tough enough looking at your log file without having to see this crap popping up in every other line.

So the good thing is that FunWebProducts made me learn 2 ways I can block people or bots from accessing my websites.

The first way is to deny specific IP addresses or blocks of IP addresses by entering those IP addresses in your CPanel > IP Deny Manager panel.

Now, the problem is that FunWebProducts has way too many IP addresses to block, so I checked if there was another way to block the bot by name and indeed there were a couple of ways. I found that the simplest way to block bots was to use your .htaccess file to do it.

I’ve just deployed the changes to my .htaccess file. I’ll post an update later.

Update (20 January 2007) :
Apparently, the second method above failed to block the FunWebProducts bot from accessing my site. I contacted my web host and they help to include one line in my .htaccess file :

This seems to have worked, going by my server logs. Notice the 403 Forbidden status resulting from FunWebProducts trying to access my homepage :

Now, the problem with throwing a blanket block on FunWebProducts is that any visitor using any product or tool from FunWebProducts (who may genuinely wanting to visit my sites) will see a 403 Forbidden page. I will monitor my stats and see if this adversely affects my earnings. If it does, I may be forced to find some sort of compromise and let FunWebProducts through even though it is bloating my log files terribly.

Update (21 January 2007) :
Lots of people have inadvertently downloaded toolbars from FunWebProducts without knowing the full consequences. I found some resources that you might want to read :

• http://www.liamdelahunty.com/tips/fun_web_products.php
• http://forums.spywareinfo.com/lofiversion/index.php/t12812.html

Tags: FunWebProducts, Bots, Spyware

I can’t help it. It takes me a long time to get over the school holidays. The hols mean crazy late nights playing board games with Sam and Sara, midnight snacks and ice cream, then late breakfasts and totally screwed up schedules. When you run a home based catering business, that translates to total madness in the kitchen. And don’t even mention my blog. You know how they say if you’re gonna start a blog, don’t leave it unattended for more than a week? Well the people who say that obviously need to spend a month in my shoes.

Since the new school year started on 3rd January, I miss the whining and bickering and the squeels of laughter when Sam and Sara are up to mischief. I miss having Sam looking over my shoulder to see what Papa is typing on the computer then being a nosybody asking about this and that. I miss Sara busily rummaging for stuff for her latest impromptu art project. I miss her slowly sidling up beside me asking, “Waaaaatcha dooooin?”. I am a total kid addict. I anxiously wait for the school bell to ring so’s I can be with them. I must be the world’s most sorriest looking Dad in the world when I’m not with my kids.

Anyway… like it or not, the kids are back to school and that is good news for my business, websites and (hopefull this blog). I got in 2 solid hours of work on my websites this morning although I absolutely hate the silence. And now that the kids are fed and napping, I’m typing this. It’s the calm before the daily storm. In ten minutes, it’ll be off to the kitchen to cook, pack the food into tiffins and I’m off on my delivery route.

I wish it was still the school holidays.

Tags: School holidays

“Aren’t I like almost 5 days too late?”

“Yo! Andrew! Are you chronologically challenged or what?”

Heh… No… I’m wishing you a Merry Christmas on the 29th of December because to me, everyday is Christmas! We were driving to our regular hangout - One Utama - for last minute shopping when Sara sighed.

“Papa… it’s almost Christmas! I’m so excited! I can’t wait to open my presents… but then you know what?”

“What?” I asked.

“After that, I’ll be sad. I’ll have to wait another year till Christmas again!” Sara said in her most serious voice… “Aren’t you sad?”

I didn’t even have to think before answering that question.

“No” I said.

“Why?” Sam and Sara chorused.

I told them, “You see… everyday is like Christmas for Papa as long as I can be with you and Mummy. Christmas carols don’t sound as nice as your laughter. And everytime you say ‘Papa I love you’, it’s like getting a Christmas present. And my bestest Christmas presents are kisses and hugs from you”

“Yah… but you’re OLD already… we’re still young. We wish everyday was Christmas.” Sam said.

“Aren’t you excited about getting presents?” asked Sara.

Well, for one thing, when your present for the last five years has been nicely wrapped underwear, it kind of gets predictable you know. Sam and Sara probably won’t understand how I feel, but I’m sure you do.

Now that your presents are opened, the (artificial) Christmas tree packed, the Christmas CDs stored, think about it - when you have the people that you love with you, doesn’t that make everyday like Christmas?

Christmas isn’t Christmas till it happens in your heart, and when it does it doesn’t just happen on the 25th of December.

So Merry Christmas everyone.

Tags: Christmas

Since returning from the hilltop, I’ve been extremely busy catching up with my websites and more importantly, meeting a few mall management people about the possibility of setting up a store - either a stall in a food court or kiosk selling merchandise. We’re also exploring the possibility of selling food at a couple of our local coffee shops.

Our home catering business has been good to us. Without it, we would surely have sunk into the depths of despair and discouragement during our employment crisis nearly five years ago. The truth is, even though the money is good, we find ourselves being tied down to a really fixed and uncompromising schedule. Sure, we can play around with our time, but it boils down to this - our home catering business is a totally hands on money maker. It only makes money when we work. If we take a break, not only do we NOT make money, but we have to give our customers a refund. Not exactly what you’d call passive, residual income.

Another problem is that with me being so tied to our home catering business, I don’t have the time to devote to building my online income (not to mention this blog). My websites also require my attention. SEO just doesn’t happen. Not only am I in very competitive categories, but I also have to handle marketing and content building. The good thing about making money online is that I can leave my sites for a while and they would still generate income. It’s just that Google is an unpredictable beast and if you want to play the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) game, you’ve got to keep up to date not only with changes to their algos, but with hundreds of competitors looking to take your spot in the SERPs. To put it simply, I am plain lucky to hold on to my page one positions given the low number of hours I am putting in. But the bubble will surely burst sooner or later.

So, my wife and I have decided that we need to specialize - with each handling our own business. She will look to diversify by setting up one or more food stalls where we will employ staff to handle the day to day running. I am already looking into setting up an online store. As we do this, we will still carry on with our home catering business. We’ve given ourselves 2 years to get our food stalls and online store profitable enough so that we can decide whether or not to let go of our home catering business. If all goes according to plans, we will still be busy - counting money that is and hopefully enjoying loads more free time. At the very least, we will have more streams of income (online and offline).

Five years ago, I thought working at home would be free and easy. Yeah…. right.

Tags: home based business, home business, business diversification

It hasn’t been a bed of roses I can tell you. Being my own boss calls for lots to sweat (literally) and grit. If we want to make money, we have to literally work hard.

As a full time work at home Dad, there is :

• no more automatic salary banked in at the end of the month.
• no more paid annual leave.
• no more medical benefits.
• no more annual increments.
• no more executive benefits.
• no more free broadband.

But what I do get is :

• More time with my family - literally. I’m at home ALL the time - which is good for me since I’m really a home-body!
• Peace of mind. With my wife and me running the show, there’s no chance we’ll retrench each other.
• Full stomach. In our line of business, there is NO way we won’t have food to eat… and with my role as senior quality control, I must say the job is very satisfying!
• Freedom to set my own schedule. This is really crucial. Although I’m really like a cartoon Monday to Friday trying to juggle business, family and web needs, I love NOT having a boss and deadlines.
• Stress that translates directly to money. Don’t kid yourself. Running a home based business and my websites is no piece of cake. However… all that stress pays off in the end by money flowing into our bank account!

But as they say… life begins at forty. And I can feel it in my bones - I have just begun to paaaarrrteeeey!

Tags: Home based business, home business, work at home