2. My online sales is slow
(Web developer: You own a restaurant. Your contractor are working on the renovation. Do you expect your contractor to guarantee your sales? We are more or less the same. Your website is a business to you, but it is only another project to us)

3. My site has never completed
(Web developer: The changes are never-ending. If you stop giving us more updates, we can get it done anytime)

4. The design sucks
(Web developer: We are designers, please trust us. If not, why would you engage our service? Anyway, you are the boss, we would still listen to you and make the design sucks for you, who cares?)

5. Why so expensive?
(Web developer: We, web developer, are dedicated to create a website with extraordinary patience. A lot of effort are spent to make sure you are the ONLY person in this world to like the website, not anyone else.)

Pin, the author of ‘Guide to Online Business’. Order now!
http://www.1.com.my/2010/04/12/launching-new-book/

Upgrade your hosting to Cloud? Migrate and save now!
http://www.1.com.my/category/case-studies/

2. Unlimited mailbox
(This is our marketing trick to make you signing up email hosting with us. Who really cares if you have 500 email users and overload our email server! We host more mailboxes than we can afford to in each server so that we can lower down the price of your hosting.)

3. Unlimited add-on domain name
(Mixing different sites together are not a good practise, we know that from day one. But since everyone like the magic word ‘Unlimited’, why not this one?)

4. 99.999999% uptime
(Customer never ask for an uptime report to justify our actual uptime. If they do, we can come out with one which they will never understand except that if they are from Mars)

5. Reliable customer support
(Smart customers are only a step away to know that we are sucks by googling, eg ‘exabxxxxx sucks’. See, not many are doing that, we are always safe!)

6. Free domain name
(What they do not know is that we are going to make them pay it back on the next year. If that is not enough, we can send them bills for DNS, Migration Fee, Domain WHOIS update fee, you name it.)

7. No-downtime migration
(We can point our finger to countless parties when there are any downtime – TM, DNS, Dogs & Cats, Weather, etc)

Pin, the author of ‘Guide to Online Business’. Order now!
http://www.1.com.my/2010/04/12/launching-new-book/

Upgrade your hosting to Cloud? Migrate and save now!
http://www.1.com.my/category/case-studies/

Sony VAIO J series in Windows XP

Most newer PCs are shipped with Windows 7 and provide no driver support to Windows XP. I bought one and it takes me few days to figure out how to get the Windows XP running. Just before we go into the technical details, I wish to share with you some advise from people that will DISCOURAGE you from doing that.

“I’m glad to provide you the information about the Device Drivers for the Windows XP Operating System. According to the specifications available, the Computer is preinstalled with the Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Operating System and does not support Microsoft Windows XP Operating System. Sony’s VAIO Computers are designed for, and supported under, the OEM version of Windows pre-installed at our factory. If you install any other Operating System in your system, it is required to contact the manufacturer of that Operating System for any and all support issues or Device Drivers and Software Utilities they may have available” said Sony Support Centre.

The following tips applies to Sony VAIO J series but I believe you can get some hint if you are on other brand or models.

1. By default, Windows XP does not include SATA driver. You need to insert the SATA driver into your Windows XP installer. To do this, use nLite

2. Sony declined to participate in the verde driver program. This is bad. To get a display card driver, use laptopvideo2go.com.

3. Other model of notebook or PC from Sony may have support to Windows XP. Since PC from same brand usually use the same hardware specs. I have got most of my drivers there. For example, I use driver from VPCCW1AGG for my VPCJ118FX.

You can email me for a list of drivers I have compiled for VPCJ118FX for windows XP. I will be more than happy to share with you and prove to you Sony support team is not there to help.

Special thanks to Aiktern from Waysoft for the SATA support.

It’s time to change, my fellow web developer friends :)

As, I do not know what happen to some of the company. Airasia, for example. They have the budget to put up the ads but they never reply your email. MSC Malaysia, do not be surprised, you hardly hear from them too after writing in. Why? Is that when the company is big and high in the sky makes you deaf? :)

By signing up Srvrc.com, you will receive the referral or reseller commission as long as your customer continue hosting their website with Srvrc.com. It helps you to build up a passive income.

The URL to the new project

Play with Barcodes

Too bad, his web hosting company put a limit and bring down the site instead of allowing the traffic to pass through and bill him later.

Site down notice

Need a work around? Check this out.

Letters are not environment friendly

For about a year, we work with a mobile office concept. No mailing address are published in our website, namecard or letterhead. Customers have no problem trusting us for our business email solution. Our operation are not affected at all without the mailing address.

1. Businesses need email address, not mailing address

2. Customers choose you not because you have a mailing address

3. My mailbox sit in my netbook, not the one fixing on the wall outside my office

4. Never print your mailing address on your namecard.

View Pin’s namecard

I didn’t like it at all the first few days. It is too Apply de way. But, I can’t live without now. Through it is not a netbook or notebook replacement, the screen and the touch keyboard can not come near to my Dell Mini. But, it is a must to replace the old handphone we have. It replace Garmin after I have installed the Tom Tom navigator, it replace my calculator, my mp3 player, my twitter…

iPhone car mount, iPhone car charger, jailbreak service, look no further but Wong, 012-3060222. SMS him. He can deliver or post it to you.

Due to some historical reason, you need to use 02 instead of 00.

For example if a Singapore fax number looks like 65-6578-9090

Outside Malaysia: dial 00-65-6578-9090
Inside Malaysia (using fixed line): dial 02-6578-9090

Cute :)

But, what about those businesses running on mobile office… hmm

My new namecard

1) My Name: anything before @
2) Name of Company: anything after @
3) Website URL: same as the name of company
4) Phone: Sudah potong
5) Fax: use email to cut less tree
6) Address: Who cares
7) Services: Check out the website
8) Post: I don’t know
9) Color: Less ink the better
10) Design: done in 2 minutes
11) Illustrator: Thank you, Lina

What caught my attention is not that Gmail lost the emails of about 60 users, but the common ‘who to contact’ problem?

Gmail Disaster: Reports Of Mass Email Deletions

Product Improvement

The worse thing is, they often see some improvement after doing the marketing. So, they continue doing their marketing but only to find out their business stop growing.

Why?

The fundamental of the business is to fulfill the need of your customers. Always make sure your products or services are right before engaging yourself in the marketing.

Do not skip market study.

“Keep asking! Every time you ask someone, it brings you a step closer to the right person who can tell you exactly what they want,” said Pearly, the veteran in corporate world, now the owner of My Island Penang
.

Cooking beans

Post your answer

One tips from him, buy .com only!

Domain name is like a piece of land. Do you agree?

Where are we going after we have cleaning the malware?
Hey, how many malware clear today?
Any new malware infection today?

Kidding, it is not that bad. But, we have been discussing about this issues:

Should we charge our web hosting customers for cleaning the malware?

Apparently, the malware infection is a compromised FTP than server-side problem. This also means the website owners should actually be responsible and take immediately action to clean and to prevent this from happening.

But, it is not our style to point our fingers than solving the problem for our web hosting customers.

So, what is all this to do with ‘Pricing your services’?

We have two pricing for our web hosting, RM400 and RM80. Most corporate users pay RM400 a year while self-managed and customers who order their web hosting package online pay RM80 a year. To be frank, there is not much of difference between the features of these two packages.

My partners asked me the same questions last time when we launched our web hosting package. They are worried that we might have problem justifying the pricing.

The answer is ‘Solving Problem’.

Through physical measurement is one simple way to tell the pricing.

1. Add a smile?
2. Better support?
3. Responsive escalation plan
4. Piece of mind
5. Satisfaction
6. Keeping customer informed

They are examples of ‘other’ measurement!

Remember, Change is Pain. The next time you pay for your residential security fee, think again!

The interview:

Me: Why is everyone calling the one not supportive of G&G as Freeloaders or even cursing them to get hurt one day?

Uncle: they deserve it because of their action.

Me: maybe they are retiree or even jobless?

Uncle: Than don’t buy the property in this location.

Me: In the first place, this location is not meant for G&G , why not you buy a property in G&G like Kota Kemuning or Taman Desa which already have facilities like that. Even condos have it.

Uncle: I know, but this area is cheap.

Me: SO you guys are Freeloaders too isn’t it? looking for non gated properties in the first place but enforce others to close up roads and gardens.

Uncle : you are right too but many Managing Directors i spoke too said they are Freeloaders and they have been in the field for 20 years and you think they can be wrong?

Me: Why the rest of you who were die hard to form RA for Security been walking every week and get petition for approval but why can’t the same effort and time given to pressure the OCPD Police or Adun to look into the matter of public safety? Isn’t all these extra security measures should be bear by the Police since they fail in curbing crime?

Uncle: No ! No! This is the problem of the people and police cannot be anywhere at anytime , you cannot blame the police . We have to be partly involve to curb crime.

Me: But the police have so much fund collecting summon and we only help their work to be lesser in curbing crime by hiring private security guards

Uncle: No you don’t understand, i have reports and statistics from Police i know that they are fighting major crime than this. So let it be , they have better thing to focus.

Me: Is it alright to hire unlicense guard in the neighborhood without license like hiring Nepalese or Indian immigrant to take care of the vicinity.

Uncle : It doesn’t matter.

Me: But that create a false sense of security as they are not trained.

Uncle : you cannot expect there is no burglary even have security guards. there’s no guarantee at all.

Me : So how do u put a stop or evaluate the service of the security company.

Uncle : nothing u can do about it.

Me: you mean u don’t even terminate their service even if the frequency is high?

Uncle: No.

Me: So this will actually make resident lose confident in the security company. What if your house got robbed and you know its negligence do you still want to pay their service?

Uncle: Yes i will. Im doing it for the community.

Me: So u r lying to yourself that you are buying a False sense of Security?

Uncle : No! no!..i got to go…

2. There is no quick way to turn your experience into writing overnight. It takes time and some creativity to make your story interesting. That is why some books sell better than the others. Blogging is good way to start! One post at a time!

3. Bosses do not have time to Blog? Who else? You are the best person with first-hand access to all the stories you want to turn into writings. Your experience can be built around a Blog and that is eventually your best resume!

4. Should I disclose so much information in my Blog, or Resume? The more you share, the more you can learn.

5. Can I write bad things about my competitors? To make someone trust your resume, believe in what you say- don’t be choosy :)

1. Block you from entering your own house unless you register with them or put up the car sticker. They decided to penalize you because you don’t pay for the monthly security fee like what others do.

2. One is required to write down his name to enter the residential area. I draw a stick-man picture and they do not bother to check. After they discovered my trick, they decided to have the guard ask for your driving license and write for you instead. When they ask for my house number- my answer is ‘random’. To your surprise, it works!

3. The latest episode including putting up the fencing to block bad guys. Why not add a 1,000 Watt electrical fencing one shot? Wait, one at a time.

4. The committee members have their way to inject fear to the residents. First, they will tell you how they manage to reduce crime rate with series of improvement. If that is not enough to boost the level of your fear, they have no lacking of scary break-in stories to share.

5. To certain extend, the are going to tell you that even the police officers are suggesting each residential area to have their own security guard. Good to have but should we have? In another words, the place we stay is not safe because we don’t have enough security guard?

Police Station is only 200m from the residential area

What is next?

It is about how much you pay for your security fee. It is how we can solve the problem with the best method.

MMU makes the same mistake, are we repeating it?

Where is the missing 13th Floor?

Let’s look at what is happening around you

1. Streamyx bills you every month
2. Your passport or driving license expire
3. Astro subscripton fee, water bill and many others…

Hardly ANY of them check your decision of, to renew or not, before sending in their invoices. See, service providers view it as a taboo to ask.

It is actually alright to ask! There is a cost to generate that unwanted invoice if someone decided to terminate your services. For those who ask, it is the best way for you to find out the feedback directly from your customers. Isn’t that it is the best time to do that?

There is a price to pay when someone terminate your services. But, simply issuing an invoice or bill do not solve the problem, either. It only incurs even more cost!

Never assume your customers are ‘required’ to renew with you each time after the expiry date. Give them a choice, give them the respect to choose what they want and what they don’t want.

Google’s Web Design Company

If Google has created the most amazing website, why do they not start their own web design business?

When we work for someone, we get paid and at the same time we get the chance to acquire new skills. For example, a web designer creates an online store for someone and gets paid for the time spent and the quality of work. Such a relationship provides a very good platform for someone to learn.

The owner of the online store will not share the revenue with you. Every day, value is built into the project and this has nothing to do with you (The most you get is a portfolio). The web designer goes project by project, having a bad time during year-end when all companies have finished their budget.

This does not only happen to individuals, but businesses as well. Most successful companies change their business direction so as to have recurring sales rather than one-off profit. All these involve applying their skills in different ways.

Web designers venture into their own online business; contractors build their own housing project; programmers develop their own software for sale. Remember, the moment you start, you are accumulating your value somewhere. When you wake up tomorrow, it is still with you, though you have much more to worry about, such as operations and marketing.

If you were Google now, would you want to start own web design business?

Confession #2: Web developers do not tell you that most online business they have created last no more than a year!

How much is eBay?

News like YouTube sold for 1.6 billion USD to Google, eBay acquired Skype for 2.6 billion often get all of us so excited and usually make us start to wonder about how we too can start something similar. Incidentally, Air Asia with their online booking system, grew their flight business continuously in the last 5 years.

Air Asia outsourced their booking engine to a third party solution provider, but we’ve never heard Larry of Google or Steve Chen of YouTube engaged similar strategy to develop the online business for them. Instead, their solution is “home-brewed”.

This is because Air Asia’s core business is to provide affordable flight (Everyone Can Fly!) and the booking engine is just a medium for the public to book their tickets. No matter how well they design the entire booking system, it is more important to have a well managed airline system. Outsourcing the ticket booking system can allow Tony to concentrate more on the airline business itself.

So, let’s look at a scenario here where Ah Beng wants to build a second eBay.

He proposed to us that he wants to build a platform like eBay and then asked us for a full-fledge proposal of the entire system. These people either do not understand what it cost to build a successful online business and instead of them providing us the specifications, they are asking us to do it for them. It’s like asking the architect to find me a good location for my next restaurant.

You might ask then, what kind of services we provide, since we don’t help people build their second eBay?

After Ah Beng realized how a second ebay wouldn’t work as he’d planned, he then started his own restaurant business in Klang Valley. Business grew by leaps and bounds. Reservations of table through the receptionist became a bottleneck with the increment of business volume. He then came to us again after realizing how an online reservation system can help him clear the bottleneck and at the same time how he can use the online medium to expand his market reach.

After outsourcing his entire online presence to us, Ah Beng can then continue to concentrate on his restaurant business, where his expertise lies in. From this experience, Ah Beng realized that a successful online strategy is very much like a good restaurant, where the owner must himself understand how the restaurant business works

Confession #3: Web developers do not like to present a mock-up if given the choice.

Website Mockup

We had a humble beginning when we just started our web design business 6 years ago. Some customers asked for mockup before project confirmation.

Yes, you have a test drive before you buy a car, some sample to test before you order something. But this should never happen to a web design project.

What is a mockup? Mockup is the draft design of the website that you are going to produce later. Customer feel that by looking at the mockup, they can judge how well is a web design company, and then only to confirm.

There is a cost to develop a mockup. Mockup is a result of detail study of customer’s service and products, understand how to present the website and to make it interesting. It is part of the development, and there is cost associated with it.

My personal experience of dealing with customers who wish to have a mock up…

99.99% you don’t get the deal, see :)

Confession #4: Web developers are suffering, business is bad!

Blog Kills Web Developers

WordPress is a free publishing platform. It will turn 5 years soon and you will be amazing of how many people are using it now, especially as Blog. Blog works so well for everyone to share personal journal on the web. You can sign up one for free and start blogging almost instantly!

Yes, Blog is free! Free is not good – at least for businesses. That is why, blogging spread like fire among individual users than businesses. It has becoming a New Marketing way for most businesses. Old corporate managers do not want to miss this new marketing opportunity, ended up setting one official corporate website together with an official Blog.

It was never easy to tell my customers that Blog and corporate website are the same. Fancy design still remains as the top-most-wanted feature for most of my customer. It was designed as like to please just the corporate website owner than people visiting it. Or, it may be the idea of web developer to push for beautiful layout, which in most case, the same result can be delivered by a page simple as Google main page.

WordPress has done so well in keeping the design separated from the content. It works like the theme in you Nokia Phone. You can choose to change the look and feel of your screen without entering all your contact in your address book again. This sounds simple but challenge is everyone has to adapt to a single format (post title, post slug, categories) of content, yet work in any page!

We have changed the look and feel of our corporate website several times, without worrying about rebuilding the content. But, you will be surprised with number of corporate websites still built with both content and design combined and ready to have them built from scratch again in their next revamp.

Bloggers are paving the way for the change of corporate website. They take the risk of change, trying up how the new format of content definition should work. Bloggers do not have website in the past. Creating a Blog is not a revamp to them, but something new.

But, for a company with already spending so much in the past in their website, it is hard for them to make the change. They choose not to make immediate decision. They are still on the look-and-see state, but will eventually follow!

There are three things happening now,

1. Businesses are starting to understand the importance of the goal of creating a website. A goal must be measurable, it can be number of order, number of people downloading your location map, number of support email received, except branding :)

2. The platform of Blog, such as WordPress, after a long 5 years of development are now ready to prove that the technology is mature yet simple to user now.

3. All of us are no longer limiting to our own job of scope. My partner just login to our corporate website edited one of a page posted months ago and approved some comments. In that 5 minutes works, he turned himself into editor, proof reader, comment moderator, etc. The rules changed. You are taking over works of airline booking agent because you know it can be done online, faster and cheaper.

Business will soon no longer need a web developer!

Confession #5: Web design itself is a wrong business model

Classified Companies

I was talking to my friend who worked in a classified company. His company is into producing an inches thick printed classified and distributed free to businesses. The revenue model is simple, to get more companies to advertise, the better. You can choose from point form listing to full-page color advertisement, as long as you can pay for it.

We both agreed that these industries won’t last long. My friend estimating it would last for another 10 years and will start to go down. Why?

1. Customers are getting smarter now. See, you can’t pay Google for a clean high listing, but you can do it in Classified. Google use several method to find out the most useful and popular website and list them high, in a more technical term, PageRank. Yet, classified companies spent more time to recruit more sales rep to sell more ads than focusing in improving their Classified.

2. It wasn’t handy. Printed classified is thick and heavy. It requires you to go through the whole Klang Valley to find one Plumber who is near your house. Search engines solved this problem, presenting you with a weight-less solution, as long as you are connected. You get information you need, most targeted and updated.

3. There are too many Medias now. Google will not be as successful if they start their company as one that sell and allow people to subscribe to their pay per click model. See, you need a story, a story that is truly benefiting your visitors.

At least there are few things classified companies can do to improve this

Colored and box listing are free for those who deserve it, those with lot of good testimonials, those offering responsible customer support service. Companies who advertised should somehow find a way to prove there are qualified for a listing of their rank. In fact, all listing should be free!

Then, how to keep this classified company survive if not selling advertisement? I don’t know actually, it can be many ways. Think about how to make your product useful to your customers and the readers of the Classified. Who knows, one day, the revenue could be from the selling of the Classified? Subscription fee? Adsense?

If you’re sure what will happen in the 10 years time, why not change today? Afraid of short-term pains?

Confession #6: Web developers are fighting back… :)

Long Way Home of a Web Developer

Looking back – 10 years, from one project to another, we have completed countless project for our customers, big and small. I’m glad we did. Through I found them to certain extend becoming noise, but noise is good.

We were once occupied by web design projects. We spent most of our time solving problems for our customers. It keeps us really busy. To cope with it, we get more staff. And when we realize we have more mouth to feed every month, we struggle to get more projects. This can be done only if your team never fall sick, your sales persons close deal timely, your designer produce the same good quality on every project, you have same less-fussy customers every time…

While your customers happily passing all the noises to you in their so-called outsource process, you are scratching your head to manage unnecessary noise over and over. You engage more staff than automating the process, you use your time to help your customers grow than your own.

Not only this, you find the red ocean spreading across in front of you. Web design firms fighting each other from getting drown. You try to find out why customers pay little on their website, when you think you should deserve more? You’re no longer satisfied been paid of your time spent, instead of values created.

Never underestimate your values.

We can create wonders if we start something today, together.

Confession #7: Web developers has no marketing budget

Brand to Blame!

I’ve always wanted to ask a brand consultant how are they going to brand a company to- offering good services, making their customers feel good…

Branding is modern-day fortune telling.

They talk to people who believe in them only. I was never approached by a street fortune teller because I don’t look like their customer. Perhaps, I looked like those who is going to throw them a question of why not they spend more time predicting their own future (to be more specific, Toto’s winning numbers).

Fortune teller must always make sure they look good, at least from outside. Since their work is all about prediction, telling everyone they have the most accurate prediction give them more creditability- but what is prediction creditably for? The most I can say is, that particular fortune teller is luckier is his wild guess!

Well, many branding companies carry big names. That big name is only to make them look good and cost you more. The big name does not help you to make what you are selling taste better, or your customers to feel better.

Do not worry, like most fortune tellers, they are not going to cause anything bad to your business. See, you won’t die now even if a fortune teller told you so (but I’m sure they don’t want you to die and have one less customer).

But the real problem when you have a brand consultant with a successful business! Who knows, the credits go to branding? Having stay alive for one extra day, has nothing to do with a fortune teller, right?

Enjoy reading

‘如有雷同，实属巧合’

Pin