Monthly Archives: March 2008

US Daylight Savings Times In Effect Now Till Nov 2

If you’re outside of the US, you’ll know that twice a year when the US goes on and off Daylight Savings Time, it can play havoc with appointments you’ve arranged, teleseminars, etc, when reality get shifted forward or backwards an hour.

For the record, the US is on DST as of March 9 and go off DST on Nov 2.

Singapore which is in a GMT+8 timezone is now 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (EST).

And you’ve been reminded, so showing up an hour late for a voice conference will not be so cool now that you’re aware…

Friday Podcast: Facebook Application Monetization – A View From The Inside…

facebook developers garageThis past Wednesday I joined a number of Facebook Application developers and sponsors on a “Marketing and Monetization of Facebook Applications: Hype or Goldmine?” at the second Singapore Facebook Developers Garage organized by the Entrepreneur 27 Singapore and Singapore PHP users group.

The panelists included:

  • Bernard Leong (Thymos Capital partner, and session moderator)
  • Leonard Lin (TYLER Projects managing partner – developer of Facebook application BattleStations!)
  • Kien Lee (Senatus founder – an investment holding company which owns more than 100 Facebook applications)
  • and myself (through my work on the $uperRewards monetization system for Facebook applications)

facebook application monetization panel

Facebook Application Monetization Panel: Leonard Lin, myself, Bernard Leong, Kien Lee

I had my MP3 recorder capture most of our panel discussion and you can access the recording below.

[display_podcast]

For more coverage, check out:

Unravelling The Rubik’s Cube Of Business Success

Talking to a number of budding entrepreneur’s at last evening’s Singapore Facebook Developers Garage and hearing about their growing pains served as an impetus to get this post out. Some of you whom I met up with at Affiliate Summit would have heard parts of this, but here it is in more detail…

No matter whether you live in Las Vegas, or Vancouver, BC, New York city or Singapore, the questions are the same – How do you grow your business?

I’m going to outline 3 discrete stages that I see business go through, and I’m going to paint some generalizations here. (generalizations refer to 90-95% of the people in each of these categories out there. So hold off on the flames, especially if you’re part of the 5-10% of “distribution curve busters” out there)

The 3 stages of Continue reading

Monetization Options For Facebook Application Developers

In a couple of hours time I’ll be on the panel at the second Singapore Facebook Developers Garage, which features the topic: “Marketing and Monetization of FB Applications: Hype or Goldmine?

The session moderator Bernard Leong has posted a kickoff post: Marketing and Monetization of Facebook: Prologue

If you’ve spoken to me or exchanged emails, you’ll know that I’m a pragmatist at heart. Having see the rise of the dotcoms and dot-crashes soon after, I’m certainly not in this application if the end result of facebook monetization is mere “hype”.

Talking to Jason Bailey, whom I’m helping to launch his $uperRewards FB monetization system, I’ve seen the applications and case studies of successful FB applications which are making $100,000 – $200,000 a month.

These applications are probably in the top 5% of Facebook applications that turn a profit and a huge profit at that…and the reality of any capitalist society is that you must benchmark yourself against benchmark yourself against the leaders, rather than the other 90% of Facebook developers who are merely scrambling to find two nickels to rub together…

A business must be able to generate positive cashflow and must be able to sustain a comfortable lifestyle for the application creators. Anything less and you’re running a charity.

Let’s break this down for a moment…

An “average” application might generate $10,000 to $15,000 a month, which could be fairly reasonable…until you break that $15,000 by 30 days, or $500 a day.

$15,000 a month or $500 a day, with an assumption of 50,000 daily active users means you are generating 1 cent per daily user…that’s pretty pathetic

Instead, if you want to go big with Facebook Applications, you need to define your goal and reverse engineer the process.

I think $100,000 per month is a decent benchmark. (as a starting point…)

With an average of Continue reading

Busting Through The Internet Marketing Learning Curve

It’s a fact that no matter how smart you are there’s something out there you will not have got a handle on yet, and that’s where books and other learning material fill the gap.

books

What I like to do before heading to the US each time and order a bunch of books from Amazon and send it to my hotel.

Observer say we’re likely to be in the information economy for a long time to come, and a lot of times what separate you from your competitor is using one extra technique or website or service that they aren’t using. So every little bit of “intellectual juice” helps.

On this trip, among the books I’ve picked up were:

  • WordPress for Dummies
  • Instant Income by Janet Switzer
  • Blogging Heroes: a series of interviews with bloggers
  • Various titles from the Dan Kennedy “No BS” series of business books

I fall into the trap sometimes of having the books in hand, but not putting in the time to read them, and by extension putting the knowledge into action.

Being successful is hard work…and not putting in Continue reading

Post-Affiliate Summit West Monetization And Action Plan

I’ve landed in Singapore after a gruelling 17 hour 30 minute non-stop flight from LAX to Singapore (considerably shorter than the 20+ hour flight with a stopover in Tokyo or Hong Kong) and promptly took a 7-hour afternoon nap. I do love working my own hours…

affiliate summit shawn collins missy ward

At Affiliate Summit West with ASW co-founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward

If it was your first Affiliate Summit or you would like to get more out of your trip, here’re my suggestions:

  • Follow Up

Yes, you can mass mail all the people you met, but social marketing/conversational marketing is what’s going to give you an edge in building relationships and bringing your business to the next level. Include a personal note, talk about winning Continue reading