Zoltan’s Business News & Blog

When I woke up this morning I just noticed a big decrease in traffic on many sites I own / manage. I didn’t know what is really going on, just checked my stats over and over again and couldn’t find anything strange… until I saw some news about an earthquake in Taiwan.

A powerful earthquake jolted Taiwan late Tuesday, killing two people whose home collapsed and prompting a tsunami alert on the second anniversary of the waves and quake that killed 230,000 in south Asia. (ABC News)

A pair of powerful earthquakes off the coast of Taiwan damaged undersea cables and disrupted telephone and Internet access in Asia on Wednesday.

“All of the ISPs in Singapore are affected,” said Michael Sim, a spokesman for Starhub Internet Pte. Ltd., which provides cable and wireless Internet services, referring to connectivity problems in Singapore. Sim blamed the disruption on damage to undersea cables caused by the earthquakes. Internet access in the city slowed to a crawl and some Web sites were unreachable.

“Everybody’s doing their best to migrate [traffic] to alternate routes or to fix the affected routes,” Sim said.

Japan’s NTT Communications Corp. said 84 leased lines were out of service as a result of the problems and international toll-free calling was being disrupted. Conventional international calling was in operation albeit with limited capacity, said Akiko Suzaki, a spokeswoman for the carrier in Tokyo.

In Beijing, a China Network Communications Group Corp. (China Netcom) representative, who gave only his surname Chen, said some international connections had been affected. That disruption left some international Web sites accessible in Beijing, while others could not be reached. Chen did not know when full service might be restored. (InfoWorld)

After further checking my stats, I found at that this is the cause of the dropped traffic… it looks like I am at least 25-30% dependent on China, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan traffic. Our sites register at least 75% less Chinese logins.

My AGLOCO network has started to grow, already reached 50 persons. The more people you refer the more shares you will own on AGLOCO. 

Today, just a few promotion tips for your AGLOCO network. The promotion tips are taken from an old AGLOCO newsletter. Don’t know what is AGLOCO? Read below:

• AGLOCO - Own the Internet 
• Join AGLOCO  

To help you we have also listed a couple of blogs that our Members have created to share ideas on how to obtain referrals, as well links to two successful Members who have over a thousand referrals.

Ideas
http://aglocoideas.blogspot.com/(good site for ideas for obtaining referrals – sample emails etc.)

Two successful recruiters:
http://mccallsnotes.spaces.live.com/blog/ (over 6,000 referrals)
http://www.johnchow.com/the-agloco-viewbar/ (over 1,700 referrals)

Two ‘fun AGLOCO sites’
http://aglocovideo.blogspot.com/ (a Malaysian video in English)
http://www.aglocotest.com/ (A newbie diary)

Still not an AGLOCO member? Join mine here.

I first read his blog about 10 days ago, since then I read it daily and everyday I find something new. Well, new for me. His old posts are very interesting, he writes about blogging for a living (although he claims to donate his blog income to charities), AGLOCO, AdSense and other Internet media, Google and a lot more. Even cars…

John Chow lives in Vancouver, Canada and he is a self proclaimed Internet (or dot Com) mogul. According to his posts, the personal blog gets around 200,000 unique visitors a month. This is quite a lot for a personal blog, so he is definitely doing something very well.

His style of writing is excellent, his posts are easy to understand… and I would love to have his writing skills. But, considering that English is not my mother tongue, I think I should not complain. What I like the most is the embedded images, screenshots and charts into his posts. John, what editor do you use? I am quite new to blogging and it is hard for me even to change the colors of my blog. I wonder if I should write my posts first in a normal editor like OpenOffice not directly through the WordPress editor.

Let’s get back to the subject. In my opinion, reading his blog is a must for everybody who is serious about making a living (exclussively) online.

For all my friends, readers, business partners, customers:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

May Happiness, Health, Peace, Prosperity and Success be yours throughout the coming year.

There is an interesting article in WebMasterWorld about AdSense predictions for 2007. I will try to summarize what I like the most and whether I think it will happen or not:

• Google’s overall revenues will either stay the same as 2006, or rise slightly. True
• Marginal quality sites will become less and less profitable. True
• Continuing trend from 2006, advertiser behavior will continue to change pushing DOWN ad prices, but overall ad expenditures will increase. True
• Google will not allow any third-party audit of their click-fraud rate in 2007. Unless they will be forced to do so
• 2007 will see the first documented case of click-fraud blackmail. The same lightweight criminals in poorly policed countries that currently collect blackmail from mid-sized companies by threatening DDOS attacks will realize that they can get the same effect much, much easier by threatening to get AdSense publishers banned. The ransom note will go something like this: “On Thanksgiving Day, you will see hits on your home page from over 5,000 unique IP addresses that contain the unique URL of www.yerdomain.com/#payup-or-else. You will wire $2,000 to the following bank account by Dec. 15th, or else we will use 5,000 other unique IP addresses to click-fraud your account during the second half of December. Google will then freeze your Christmas profits and then ban you. If they don’t ban you, they will still keep your funds. In any case, we will attack again until Google does ban you.” Interesting, however, I think that google have the power to distinguish these clicks.
• The total number of AdSense publishers will continue to swell, which means the average AdSense payout will continue to drop. By the end of 2007, the average monthly AdSense publisher payout will be under $10 (it’s probably well under $25 already). Another good one, so actually there will be more millionaires and more and more publishers who’s only aim will be to pay the hosting fees from AdSense revenues…
• More and more money is put into internet advertising. Hmm… most probably true
• Spam and black hat stuff though will also escalate. Unfortunately most probably true…
• Webmasters will continue to whine for solutions that require Google get into the human intervention business. Google will continue to ignore all such suggestions. They will need to make changes. I guess currently their technology - human intervention ratio is about 80-20%, in my opinion, in 2007 this will go toward a 70-30% or even 65-35%. You can resolve a lot with IT but not everything.

If you want to read more, go to WebMasterWorld and read this post.

I always enjoyed movies where famous managers travel from one city to another just to negotiate some new deals or eventually sign a new contract. It was good to see that as a successful manager you can reach the whole world.

Those days are gone, technology changed everything. Now you can do almost everything from your office or even your home, especially if you are running a “virtual” business. All you need to have is a good internet connection and you can be where you want… of course only virtually… But, you can definitely manage your business through the internet.

Do you think real businesses can be created and managed entirely through the Internet or real money is in the real world? I earn most of my income through the internet and although I am not complaining, I could do better. I personally don’t travel a lot for business but I would love to, I am staying 12-18 hours a day on the … internet…

So, can you manage your entire business from your (home)office or do you need to travel a lot?

In cursul anilor am vazut multe firme si servicii internet care au aparut din senin dar au disparut de la o zi la alta. Apoi, a venit acel dot-com-crash prin care s-au pierdut miliarde de dolari.

In aceste zile o noua idee si un nou site si-au facut aparitia. Este vorba de AGLOCO, sau cum altii o numesc AllAdvantage 2.0. Va aduceti aminte de AllAdvantage? Era sistemul prin care puteai sa faci bani doar stand pe net si navigand. Imi aduc aminte cand cei care aveau un internet cafe, si-au instalat AllAdvantage sa castige bani prin utilizatorii de netcafe. La vremea respectiva (1999-2000 daca nu ma-nsel) foarte putini aveau internet si lumea naviga prin dial-up. Lumea? De fapt, erau probabil cateva sute, poate mii de persoane care au folosit internetul in fiecare zi.

AGLOCO este un sistem asemanator cu AllAdvantage si are avantajul ca a aparut intr-o perioada de maturitate a internetului si are mari sanse sa devina un succes, bine-nteles cu un management pe masura. AGLOCO sustine ca daca devii membru la ei poti deveni actionar si poti castiga sume serioase de bani daca iti construiesti o retea proprie.

AGLOCO poate deveni un succes, daca vor reusi sa atraga 10 milioane de mebrii pana in iulie 2007, succesul este deja (pe jumatate) garantat. Restul depinde de un management bun, si considerand ca membrii au posibilitatea sa castige sume importante de bani daca folosesc sistemul is isi construiesc o retea, personal consider ca AGLOCO poate deveni un “boom” important pe internetul global. Iar, daca ma insel… am pierdut doar timpul (nu mult)… nu si bani.

• Mai multe detalii in limba engleza
• Inregistraza-te gratuit si construieste-ti reteaua

A few days ago, I created an account at AGLOCO. According to their site:

AGLOCO™is the first Internet based economic network, which enables you as a Member to ‘Get your share of the internet.’ Advertisers, search companies, online merchants and other businesses currently pay lots of companies to deliver people like you to them to get your attention and sell goods. With AGLOCO™they will be paying YOU. AGLOCO™ is also a global community of Internet users whose active Members can be paid for all their online activity. By downloading our proprietary Viewbar™ technology, members benefit from engaging yet unobtrusive content tailored to their interests. AGLOCO™ also pays its members to refer their friends to the community (and for those friends to refer more friends through four levels of extended referrals.) I am a little skeptical about the future success of algoco, but it can also become the next big internet boom, so I decided to give it a try.I am a little skeptical about the future success of algoco, but it can also become the next big internet boom, so I decided to give it a try.AGLOCO is actually a MLM system, where you get paid for your referrals and their referrals. The more people you signup under you the more money you can make.I am a little skeptical about the future success of algoco, but it can also become the next big internet boom, so I decided to give it a try.AGLOCO is actually a MLM system, where you get paid for your referrals and their referrals. The more people you signup under you the more money you can make.How do you earn cash and shares?

I am a little skeptical about the future success of algoco, but it can also become the next big internet boom, so I decided to give it a try.AGLOCO is actually a MLM system, where you get paid for your referrals and their referrals. The more people you signup under you the more money you can make.How do you earn cash and shares?Sign up, use the web as usual and earn cash and shares - it really is that simple. Once you install the Viewbar™ software it automatically records the time you’re actively online, and AGLOCO pays you for it. But the first step is to sign up and become a member. It’s fast and it’s free. If you refer your friends and family AGLOCO will pay you even more cash and shares.

They have a member / earnings calculator, where you can estimate your future earnings. For example,  if you sign up 25 people and those referrals sign up 5 people, and you all surf 5 hours / month, you would earn 24,411.25 per month! Pretty impressive.

Learn more about AGLOCO and join as soon as possible!

I just wanted to check something on del.icio.us and typed www.del.icio.us… To my surprise the site with www is not resolving.

I just wonder how many visitors del.icio.us losing every day just because they did not added an URL redirect (and a nameserver record) for the www version on their subdomain (del.icio.us is actually a subdomain…). This should be a 2 minute work for anyone with minimal technical knowledge…

After we launched www.OneLoveNet.com we realized that for an international dating site, we need to get at least a regional classification. So, we quickly made some changes and integrated a worldwide regional database. Later members will be able to easily search for profiles from their province, and hopefully the chances of finding “the one” will be much higher. Yes, the internet is global… but dating with someone close to you will be always better than dating with someone who is thousands of miles away from you.

For example, let’s take the province where I live, there are already 5 profiles posted: Profiles from Satu Mare, Romania (yes, one of these 5 profiles is actually mine… you can guess which one).

Actually the site is starting to become busy, there are already 277 profiles posted, mainly from Romania but international members will also come very soon. Why mainly Romania? Because I needed to get a criticall mass before I can start advertising it internationally. Yes, I could use 1-2 more external links from international sites, so feel free to link to the site, this way it gets known even faster.