17Mar Who is my webhost – IXIY
A few people have written to me to ask about my webhost. So, to save replying to all the emails, let me put down in one post and next time, I just post the link.
I have a lot of blogs to make money. I also have a forum that eats up a lot of CPU resources. My sites have been hacked a few times and sometimes, the hackers are just doing it for fun.
Eventhough I know a bit about webmastering and had owned my own websites since 2002, I prefer to leave all the technical things to a reliable webmaster/webhost to deal with all the nitty-gritty stuffs.
So, IXIY comes in as the answer to my requirements. I do not like to deal with too many headaches of hacking, spamming and other stuffs. If you use WordPress, you have to deal with it somehow because it is easily hack-able. I want a reliable hosting which ensure that my sites run 24/7 without downtime because downtime means losing money or worse, having to refund money because ads are not working.
A lot of people asked me how much I pay for my webhosting. I cannot reveal because the amount may shock you. My per month fee is more expensive than most people annual webhosting fees. But then, they only use one or two blogs while I have 20 over domains and one forum. I also use all kind of scripts that eats up the CPU resources and hence, I need virtual private hosting.
Therefore, never compare webhosting packages based on the dollar amount. The main criteria is to find out if the company is reliable. There are fly by night webhosts which disappear over night. There are companies which never bother to reply you. Or cheap hosting where they give you links to read and tell you, “next time read our tutorial before asking, you moron!’ (ok, maybe they never use the word moron but they do tell you curtly the answer is found on their tutorial). Also don’t be fooled with gigantic space which you probably never need at all.
I have two webhosts. One is IXIY and the other Bluehost whose service is getting from mediocre to bad. So far, IXIY still lives up to expectations. IXIY belongs to a local guy, a blogger I know who sets up his own webhosting. However, my sites are hosted in USA and not in Malaysia. That way, if I SOS to my webhost to press the red button, I know I can get him during the day (contrary to many webhosting companies who boasted 24/7 service but when I am awake, they are still sleeping). What red button? Just in case, the authorities come knocking on my door to tell me my blog insulted someone. You get the drift?
So, if you are interested to sign up for a webhosting with IXIY, take my link please!
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16Mar The news that make you go WTF….
I read this piece of news recently and it makes me go what the………
At my age, it is our responsibilities to have some money for rainy days, college fees and later on, university fees. So, we have to keep some of these money in the bank. It is very depressing that the interest rates keep dropping and dropping. Each month, we are getting less and less returns from our fixed deposits. Yet, it is risky to invest money in other ways because investing means risk and risk means losing it all if something goes wrong.
So, can you see how ridiculous if one day, the banks no longer wants to keep money and ask us to pay them for the safekeeping of our money? Then, we have to revert back to the times when we do not have banks. My mother told me my grandmother and grandfather (who used to be very rich) kept money under their pillows and gold sewn into their clothes. During the Japanese invasion, our colonial money no longer worth anything because they have the banana tree Japanese money or something like that.
The only valuable things were gold. Land was useless too because you cannot bring your land and run.
Now, back to the banks…..
According to Malaysian Insider…..
It is a similar story in many other countries. The reason? Central banks around the world are trying to stimulate flat-lining economies by offering ultra-cheap credit. But the low interest rates for borrowers translate to low interest rates for depositors too.
According to OCBC Bank economist Selena Ling: “Governments want to kick-start lending after the credit crunch. They also want to stimulate the economy.”
The US Federal Reserve’s key interest rate is now between 0 per cent and 0.25 per cent while the Bank of England has now cut rates to 0.5 per cent.
In Britain, with some accounts paying just 0.13 per cent on some types of accounts, rates are now possibly the lowest on record. Many savers are having to come to terms with the fact that low interest rates are here to stay.
In Britain, Andrew Barker, Skipton Financial Services’ chief operating officer, was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying: “Most now realise that this is unlikely to be a temporary blip, and it will be a year or more before savings rates are likely to rise.”
In fact, some financial experts are even warning that the next trend will be for savers to actually start paying banks for the service of holding their cash.
I hope our money does not turn into banana tree money one day. Moral of the story, stop bothering to make too much money. Pause and smell the roses.
I also read that our EPF dividend for 2008 may be only 4.5%. According to Malaysiakini, It’s bad news for Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contributors – the dividend is expected to be as low as 4.5% for 2008. They used to pay 8% when I was working. I too have quite a tidy sum tied down in EPF as I worked since I was 17 years old. I can only withdraw some of the money when I reach 50 years old, which is another 6 years. I wonder what the interest rates will be when I reach that age? Perhaps EPF said we must pay them for admin charges instead?
Come to think of it, at least I am not filthy rich. Hence, I don’t lose that much. Hahaha.
11Mar Online income and recession
There is so much talk about the US recession being an L shape and Malaysia recession being a U shape and not a V shape etc etc. Being an average income family, I do not worry so much about the recession hitting my family.
However, I can foresee it affecting my online income. Recession is definitely going to affect the make money blogging sector. When companies stopped spending so much on advertising and consumers stopped shopping, the oasis will dry up and we will be fighting amongst ourselves to get a piece of the cake.
A lot of enterprising individuals are already promoting blogging for money as a way to supplement the daily wages. So, there are going to be an increase of bloggers in this already saturated blogosphere. When times are bad, more will resort to black hat methods which make it even harder to make money. One sneaky black hatter is equivalent to 100 or even more noob bloggers.
Then, we are going to see our blog posts being ripped and reuse by these new bloggers. As it is, a church friend already told me she is attending a blogging course, given free of charge by someone. This someone said blogging will make money and recipe blogs are the best money making blog. It was hinted that it is not hard to make recipe blogs because recipes are easily found in books. Good thing it was in church that the conversation took place or I will curse the person to hell. You see, the person gives free blogging lesson but sells webhosting and domain. I told my friend that blogging is free and one does not need to invest in any hosting or domain until one is very sure that blogging is enjoyable.
So has recession already affected your income? My blogging income was reduced several months ago but I think it was due to my diversion to do other things like taking up courses, doing volunteer work and spending time with my family. I do notice that advertisers are getting more demanding and only want high PR blogs. Some companies demand that we only blog for them and not other companies.
In a recession like this, we are at the mercies of the demanding companies and we either follow their rules or forget about making money blogging. Me? I will stick to my positive views that businesses still need to do their SEO and need to buy links and paid posts. They still need good quality blogs with good PR to do so. So, I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping to survive, albeit on lower income.
11Mar I’ve got my ‘accountant’ to fill my W-8BEN US tax form
The fine prints and the number of questions and boxes to fill scares the hell out of me. Lucky I have an accountant hubby who took the form and get the job done for me. I only sign on the dotted lines and didn’t even read what was filled by hubby.
The W-8BEN is the Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding. Big words, scary sounding, ain’t it?
I have no choice but to fill it because one of the companies cannot pay me two months of my income and it has come up to xyz amount. Hmmm…one cannot be too explicit from now on, eh?
I had signed and mailed the PDF format back to the company and keep my fingers crossed that Uncle Sam will not suck my blood. I am poor enough already.
02Mar Advertlets has not pay since last year?
I don’t subscribed to many local make money blogs feeds because most of them are just basically copy and paste jobs. But here is one that works really hard. Shamoneymaker is a Singaporean and he puts a lot of dedication into his writings, analysing and dissecting information and produce original posts.
Advertlets is still a good option and company, both are in fact, but I’ve issues with my current choice, and I just can’t keep faith to it anymore.
So far my major concerns are:
I’ve not been paid since last year, I can’t be bothered to keep on reminding them. Their payment system needs an overhaul
Well, what about other Advertlets publishers? Have you been getting your payments?
Lately, local ads and advertorials are quite slow due to companies cutting down on their advertising budget. Everyone is embracing for a rough ride ahead. But not getting paid by Advertlets? Well, it is an old issue that just crops up again.
02Mar March on…
It is March already! It is time I stop my slacking and get back to my blogging for money mission.
During the month of February, I let a lot of paid post assignments given to me expired. I didn’t grab any paid posts because I was either too tired, simply not interested in crapping or afraid of losing pagerank.
I also didn’t upgrade my blogs, the plugins or read anything to learn on improving make money blogging.
So, this post is to tell myself to stop being such a lazy bum and start working. March on. Go grab every pennies I can find along the way and make money.
Now that my routine and sending and fetching my sons are somewhat established, I can grab a few hours here and a few hours there to concentrate on doing what I do best. Blogging for money.
No more mind numbing, turning stupid Hong Kong TVB series. No more silly computer games. No more reading craps online. Only work, work, work. March. March. March.
BTW, I heard that there was a Google pagerank recently? Is it true? I don’t see any increase or disappearance of my blogs PR so I cannot be sure. Was there a Google pagerank update in February or March 2009?
01Mar wOOt! RM3.63 against USD1
My hubby went to cash out the money from my Google Adsense income through Western Union – CIMB. He mumbled a figure to me and I went, “Really, cannot be! According to my calculations, it should be around ‘X’ amount of money only.
Hubby took out the slip and showed me. Now, that got both of us puzzled because it cannot be that much. So, hubby mumbled that maybe the bank cashier must have made a mistake.
Upon reaching home, he took out the calculator and after conversion, we found that the exchange rate we get is RM3.63 per one US dollar. The usual rate was less than RM3.40 and on better days, it was hovering around RM3.43.
Now, that is way cool! So much extra money due to the foreign exchange rate. This gives me extra motivation to work harder on making money online.
So, what exchange did you get?
