cash88.com scam

Like usual, I always check the statistic report of my websites to learn where and how the visitors reach my websites. In last month, suddently few of my websites' traffic increase about 20% - 100%

Then I found these traffics are come from one source : cash88.com . It is a pay-per-visit incentive program which encourage members to visit the sponsors' websites and get points. Then the points can be exchange for cash. It also have a MLM structure to ask the member-get-members to earn faster and more.

Normally I don't bother about this kind of website. But I was shocked when I saw few of my websites are listed on the categories "Computer & Internet" including my partner's website http://www.hongkong-webhosting.com/. on 25th September I have asked them to remove the misleading statemet because I am not their advertiser but until now, they still don't reply my email.

The purpose I write this post to everyone is because I suspect it is a SCAM program and I don't think his members can get the money. There are many posts in the forums already mentioned it like here and here . Further more, I also found the cash88.com programming script is Illegal !! ( click here ) How can you trust a company if it even cannot afford to buy a copyright programming scripts to run his website's membership program ?

For those who already sign up to be members, I advise you to remove all your personal information in the cash88.com especially the banking details. (Yes ! cash88.com ask your bank account information !!) and quit the program.

How Much You Charge For Web Design ?

Web design and web hosting are very competitive in Malaysia. You can easily find below RM 90/ year for web hosting, or 5 pages web design for only RM 399.00. The profit margin of web hosting and web design is becoming smaller.

I was asked by a potential client that how much I charge for a 5 pages web design ? I told him that our package price is RM 1,300 for 5 pages, not including web hosting and domain registration. He was shocked and said that my package is one of the most expensive web design package among several comparison he did.

Although I explain to him that the website is tailor made and not made by template, he still complained that the price is too expensive. Eventually he get any provider to do web design for him

Well, it is ok for me. It is no end for price war and eventually all providers will lose, except the consumers. Just like you cannot compare the BMW with Proton Saga, although both are "car" , but the features and quality are greatly different.

We just recently closed a web design deal amount RM 30k above for a well-known company in Malaysia. They never think our price is expensive. In fact, they said our price is moderate among the quotations he got.

So what I am trying to point out here is it depands what customer group you want to target. For an established company like us, it is silly to compete with the low-end web design company for low price package. If the customer want low-end web design, just introduce him to your web design's friend or your "friendly competitors", maybe one day your friend or your "friendly competitors" will introduce customers to you which they cannot handle. who knows ? :)

Seminar at Matrade - Effective Internet Marketing for Manufacturer and Exporter in Malaysia

I and my partner had a talk in the seminar at Matrade on 20th August 2007. The Seminar subject is "Effective internet marketing for manufacturer in Malaysia". It was organized by Exporter Club.

Beside me, Exporter Club also invited Hanson Toh, The one and only Google's country consultant appointed directly by Google Inc from USA.

I was so surprised to know there were many companies attended. One of the audience who is a foreigner purposely take a flight to attend the seminar just for the purpose to meet Hanson (Hey Hanson, you are famous now :p )

Hanson's topic mainly focus on PPC ( Pay per click ) or generally known as Google Adwords, while my topic mainly focus on SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) or organic search result.

Many people think SEO and PPC is competing each other, which I not agreed on it. In my opinion, there are co-exist and it is mutual compliment. Let's see the comparison of them :




Pros and Cons of PPC

Pros :
1. You get instant results. If you advertise your website on pay per click search engines, then you will get traffic now and not several months later.
2. PPC ads are perfect for time limited offers such as holiday sales.
3. You can stop PPC ads at any time.
4. PPC ads make it easy to test different keywords and landing pages.
5. PPC ads also work with websites that are not very well designed and wouldn't get good search engine rankings.
6. PPC ads allow you to bid on a large amount of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you cannot put on your web pages. i.e. “chili sos manufactuer” , “chili source manufacturer”

Cons :
1.PPC advertising can become very expensive if you bid on the wrong keywords or if you don't calculate the maximum bid price correctly.
2. Click fraud can be a problem. Not all clickers are potential customers.


Pro and Cons of SEO

Pros :
1.Traffic through organic search engine results is almost free if the up-front work has been done. 2.After optimizing your website you can use your money for different things and the optimized site will still run.
3.A larger number of visitors and search result clickers is not a problem.
4.Search engine optimization delivers long term results

Cons :
1.SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
2.SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly.
3.You must have the knowledge of SEO and make sure that you optimize your website correctly, if your want to get high search engine rankings.



Which is better : SEO or PPC ?
In my opinion, most commercial websites work best if you use both SEO and PPC. The exact mix depends on your goals. For example, if you have the products for short term promotion, or if you have many products to advertise online, it is better go for PPC, if you want to introduce your company or only few products for long terms, then you should go for SEO.

Website with google adsense

Notice that more and more website with google advertisement ? It means more and more webmasters are become the publisher of google adsense.

How is it affect to a website ? well, in my opinion, it brings more income to the webmaster, but at the same time, there are few disadvantages to the website :

1. confused the visitors - some webmasters try to earn more income by putting the ads near the navigation links, hoping the visitors will click the links. It actually sometimes confuse the visitors which are the links to the websites itself.

2. Make the visitors away - When a client clicks the ads, it will redirect the visitor to the website of the ads. So in other words, putting the ads in your website is actually driving your visitors away.

3. Image - If the website is well-established, or if it is a corporate website, puting too much google adsense ads will give the impression to the visitors : "This website or company is not professional, they still rely on google adsense to earn income, are their service/products reliable? "

Of course, some may not agree with what I said above. Let's let the visitors/clients make the judgement.

Melayu Boleh SEO Contest

Just knew from my friend Jee's blog, a SEO contest for the keyword "Melayu Boleh" is organized by www.wangcyber.com . I wonder how they choose "Melayu boleh" and not "Malaysia boleh". It seems that it only limit to the Malay's participants for this SEO contest.

Well, according to the organizer say, the word " Melayu Boleh " is 14,000 search per month ! wow ! Another surpise for me is most of the search are from Kuantan, see chart below :

At the same time, i also find that the keywords "sex melayu boleh" and "cerita lucah melayu boleh" has the search of 300 and 400 respectively per month.

I think the objective of this contest is to make the keyword "Melayu boleh" appear on top 10 so that people has less chances to find the sex related website when people type "Melayu boleh"

I think this is the first SEO contest in Malaysia, good luck to all the participants.

Hotel Malacca

Recently i have a project to optimize the website www.hoteltropicaville.net, which is a hotel located in the Malacca town. When i search for "Hotel Malacca" and had a typo error of "Hotel Malacca" , I surpise to see that there are about 41,800 website using the wrong word "Malaca" (lack of one "c" ), , and about 17,000 website using the wrong word "Melacca" ( wrongly replace the "a" to "e")

Obviosly, Malacca being a historical town in Malaysia since 15 century, there are many spelling for this historical town. One of my friend who is in France said he find the word "Malaca" is correct in his country...

Malaysia florist

I just recently visited a client who is a florist and had setup her business on internet for 1 year.

She complained to me that she didn't receive many orders, while every month she has to pay the payment gateway provider for RM 750 for the payment gateway facility for accepting credit card online.

She also complained to me that her advertisement in Sponsor links in Yahoo and Google are also not satisfied due to her ranking in not high in sponsor links.
And I checked for her for the bidding price, my god ! The top bidder is biding USD 1.00 for the keyword "Malaysia florist"

Just imagine if in a day comes 10 visitor to click, then the top bidder need to pay USD 10.00 for these visitors yet not guaranteed to become the buyers.

I think the florist in Malaysia shall consider Malaysia SEO who can help them to rank high in the normal way.

Internet marketing and web design in Malaysia

Next year ( 2007 ) is Visit Malaysia year. Suddenly many websites appear and targeting on Tourism Malaysia and introduce Malaysia travel information.

Well, it is good to have so many website to introduce Malaysia. Some designs are good, others are really bad. Nevertheless, even some quality websites (both in content and design) , is lack of people to visit.

It is due to the website owner don't know how to promote the website. In general, the search engines are most effective way to let people find a new website. But to get listed on top in search engines is not an easy job, and that's why SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) come in.

To learn more about what SEO is, please visit Singapore Search Engine Optimization..

Line down - web hosting provider nightmare

From 1st June until 6th June , it is really a nightmare for the web hosting provider in Malaysia. this is due to submarine cable failure at the SMW3 cable towards Tuas in Singapore and Pyapon in Myanmar. As a consequence, access to USA and Thailand website is affected.
( please see the TMNET and Streamyx annoucement here )

I don't know why and how it happened. My friends received numbers of calls from clients complained that they cannot access to website or emails. In this few days we keep explain to them and it really waste our time.

Many local web hosting providers are using USA as a base for allocated their server. This is because the cost of setting up servers and the cost of data centre in USA is comparable cheap than setting up in Cyberjaya in Malaysia, and also the speed of the data centre is faster than the local one. But while the line down case happen, it is time for the local web hosting provider to re-consider to setup server in Malaysia, although the infrastructure here is still not satisfied. But at least, you will receive less complain than the people who setting up servers in USA.

How did you find this website ?

Dear all visitors,

if you found this website through the keyword " Malaysia web design" , " Malaysia website design" or " Malaysia web hosting" . Then you should know the important of search engines, especially when you are using Yahoo, Google or MSN to come to my website here.

Today, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most critical success factor for a website to become popular in the Internet. For past few years, many good website, rich in content and design, finally closed down because of lack of visitors. It is quite pity for these companies to invest thousands of dollars and the result is nothing.

Since 2001, I realized that design a good website is not enough. I started to learn how to optimized the website to reach top position in search engines and I sucessfully listed some customers in top 30 position in Yahoo, MSN and Google.

If you are interested to make your website popular, please visit the website Malaysia SEO

Web Hosting Dilemma

Recently, i have a lunch with a friend who is a web hosting provider. He told me that the web hosting busiess is extremely competitive nowadays. It is because there are many web hosting providers offer high hosting space with low price. He showed me an advertisement from a local provider : 3GB space, 15 GB bandwidth with only RM 180 per year.

I asked him, "can this provider survive or earn profit with such low price ? "

He told me, " Well, I don't know, but for myself, if I offer more than 500 MB for RM 180 per year, i actually making lost -- if the client fully utilize the 500 MB and the 15 GB bandwidth"

It means many web hosting provider are playing a dangerous game - Offer huge space, low price , but at the same time "expect" the client will not utilize full space.

It this circumstance, can you expect good servces from the hosting provider that offer with such low price ? It is also a potential risk that suddenly the hosting users upload huge files and utilized fully space and bandwidth which may cause the server overload. Meanwhile, it is also easy for the competitors to pretent as a client to sabotage the hosting provider, by sign up the 3GB space, fully utilize the bandwidth and space with only RM 180.00 (USD 50) , What a low cost to saborage a competitor !!

So, Web hosting provider, you want to fight for price and space, or fight for service and quality ?

Malaysia Manufacturer and Supplier

Finally, I have established a directory, called Malaysia Manufacturer and Supplier Directory. (http://www.manufacturer-supplier.com/lma/directory) I impoted data from DMOZ, which is one of the most reliable database in the world.

I planned to build a directory for supplier and manufacturer long time ago, but didn't find a good tool to build it. By building this directory, i hope it can help Malaysia manufacturer and supplier to explore more international market.

I hereby also encourage Malaysia manufacturers and suppliers submit their URL in the directory.

How to find Malaysia good web hosting company ?

Dear all,

For those want to find a good, reliable web hosting company in Malaysia, please visit my new article : http://webhostingmalaysia.blogspot.com , Remember, price is not the main issue, the SUPPORT of the web hosting is the most critical !

5 tips for building a good and effective website

Hi, for those who plan to ask a web developer to design a website, I had writen an article called " 5 tips for building a good and effective website" , ( http://website-design-malaysia.blogspot.com/) you can click it to read this article.

Website Design for Malaysia companies : A lesson should be learnt
( If you plan to have a website, you should not miss this article - especially for Malaysian companies)

Malaysian companies could be the luckist companies in the world. Why ? Because they are a lot of government’s incentives to help Malaysian companies to promote their products. Including subsidy the companies to build a website.

The financial assistance started few years back in the year 2000. The government launched a grant called “ E-commerce Grant”, The grant’s objective is to help the Malaysian companies to sell products online through portals and payment gateway. The government appointed a list of portals providers to implement this project.

Unfortunately, the grant targeted to the wrong group - the SMI (Small and medium industries, who are merely manufactures). The SMI were keen to have a website, but when it comes to online transaction, most of them were not interested.

Why ? The reasons are simple, they are manufacturer, they don’t like to accept the order piece-by-piece, they wanted to accept the order bulk-to-bulk. Furthermore, the only mean to do online transaction is through credit card. Some manufacturers worried on frauds, and others found credit card is not practical in the bulk order which involved hundred thousands dollars.

At the end, the so called “e-commerce grant” merely became “website grant” because most of the SMI didn’t do transaction online at all.

And guess how much the portal providers charged for building a so called “website” for each SMI ? the answer is RM 10,000 (USD 2,800). Obviously, it was over-charged. A domain name, a 50MB web hosting, a few pages with products catalogue and some programming for shopping cart, these were all the SMI get. Of course, the portal providers also claimed that they have done SEO ( Search engine optimization) for the website they built for SMI.

Luckily, the chief officer of the government department who in-charge of the grant, was not stupid. He asked the providers to demo one-by-one the websites they built, starting from searching through search engines, found the website, click and browse throughout the website to make sure the website was fully function before the government release payment to providers.

Although it was tedious works, but it delivered one message to providers : you want to get money, you have to do your job. I still remember there was a provider , claiming that the website appeared in google and yahoo, the chief officer just said “show me”. The provider browsed through the page 1 to page 99 of Yahoo and Google searching the keywords but could not find the website, only showing his face that turning red and sweating…….

The story was not end there.


Few years later till now, many SMI who obtained the grant are not continued with their website. Reason being : the providers are either closed shop, OR, the maintenance cost is too high ! Some providers charge RM 1,000 (USD 280) just for maintain a so-called “website”.

Unfortunately, the government can’t help. The money was paid and the project is over.



What you should learn from the above lesson :

1) Never build a website that cannot deliver the results you want.
2) If the providers promised they can deliver the results, ask them “show me” before you pay. ( or request money back guarantee)
3) Beware of yearly maintenance fee.
4) Make sure your website appear in search engines, preferable on Top 30 position.
5) Find a reliable, history-proof web design company to design a website.

James Tan

Malaysia Professional Web Design Company and SEO Specilist

Web Design and Web Hosting Price War

I feel it is more and more difficult to do web hosting business and web design business in Malaysia.

Why ?

Because there are many idiots are playing cut-throat price war. If you read Sin Chew Daily, you can always find kind of advertisement : RM 299 full package include domain name, hosting, design....... RM 100 for web hosting.....

at the end , can they survive ?

Probable yes if they are one-man-show and can close many deals and leverage from the bulk orders. But when times go on, can they handle ?

People in Malaysia are funny, they want to see the salesperson, see the product before they want to buy. That's why e-commerce is still not popular in Malaysia. (among Malaysian buyers)

similarly, If you charge RM 299 to include web design, hosting and domain. Well, I think you need to travel to client site to collect the information at least once. Then, just imagine how many tolls in Klang Valley and how terrible is the traffic jam, and calculate how many clients can be approached a day and how much is the cost per visit.

So, tell me back, how much is the profit if the selling price is RM 299 ?

Of Course, from the consumer's point of view, they may love this price. But I always believe that a long term business is based on the mutual benefits and win-win situation. If kind of price jeopardize the seller, it will not survive longer.

At the end , who suffer ? The consumers.

Another key element that the consumers always ignore is , after creating a web site , what's next ? Many website owner just wait the visitors come and visit, then can get more enquiries from the visitors and eventually sell the products.

The fact is , No one VISIT !

If a website owner want to get more visitors ( traffic) to their website, just asking yourself : how do you find a company or product in Internet ? The answer : Search Engine like Yahoo, Google or MSN.

similarly, listing the website in search engine is a MUST. If you don't, then prepare to spend more money on off-line promotion : TV, Radio, Newspaper. You can still get many visitors : - but , mostly are local visitors. (unless you promote to overseas media)

That's why I recently always advise the website owner to go for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Only with SEO, your website will not turn to white elephant project.

Hopefully, the SEO service many not become the price war too in Malaysia. At least, to do SEO is not as simple as web design and web hosting.

James Tan
Malaysia Web Design Company and SEO Specialist