Head to Head

Head to Head 6, Asian Money Bloggers

by Melvin · Feb 4, 2010

So welcome back to the 6th edition of the ever so popular Bloggers Head to Head. So far we’ve had matched up several good blogs here and the response I was getting was really fantastic. Now for 2010, I would try to do this for at least once per month.

And for today’s flavor I am featuring two asian make money online bloggers (I know they’d disagree that they are mmo bloggers). They are not just the usual mmo bloggers that suck, instead they are too good and quality bloggers who have quite built a good following for their blog. Let’s now match Ajith from DollarShower.com against Shanker Bakshi or ShankerBakshi.com.

Questions	Ajith	Shanker
Describe yourself in less than 5 words?	90% Programmer and 10% Blogger	Self proclaimed dot Com Guru
What is your favorite breakfast?	What I like the most for breakfast is Idli – Sambar which is simple a South Indian breakfast dish. I also take one or two eggs upto four days a week. A cup of strong tea is a must for me for breakfast.	Gobi ka Parantha (Thats Chapati stuffed with cauliflower for you in English)
In a brief explanation, you are blogging about?	Well, what I write about is probably the most boring combo of SEO – Blogging Tips – Make Money Online that you get to see on every other blog these days 🙂 However, I try to do justice to my job by writing some unique posts at least one in five.	I usually write about how to Make Money Online and other technical facet of web 2.0, I am a fun loving guy, a kind hearted man who loves to help other.
Any story behind choosing that domain name?	I was after domain names related to money as I intended to write about make money online stuff alone at that time. When I was searching for the available domain names that included words like ‘money’, ‘cash’ etc I did not see anything good for two-worded names. Then I switched to ‘dollar’ and found this expired domain name quite accidentally. To be frank, I wasn’t aware of the fact that it was an expired domain name at that time.	More than anything else I want to see my name written on clouds, it can’t be better then Shanker Bakshi dot Com
How many uniques are you getting monthly?	Google Analytics shows that it’s about 5000 visitors per month though according to my host stats, it’s more than 30000 human visits (discounting bots, pings etc).	Sad to say but I am seeing a declining trend in traffic in recent time, I should give some more time everyday to my blog. It misses me a lot these days
What is your average blog income?	It is consistently above $400 in the last six to seven months and I already had four figure income three times during last one year. However, as a policy, I give away majority of what I earn as discounts and rebates to my referrals. This is because of the fact that blogging is only a part time activity for me.	Can’t say a fix amount it varies dramatically every month, I usually try to sell affiliate products through my Make Money Online blog so some time I made good sales and sometimes no sale at all. But it will be making me a wealthy stuff one day, that’s for sure.
How many hours do you spend on blogging?	Purely for blogging activities (publishing, link building, moderation etc) I spend about one to 1.5 hrs a day. However, I also do one or two hours of reading and research in addition. Initially I used to spend up to 7-8 hrs a day on blogging and promoting my blog but I found that it’s not worth to spend time like that at the expense of one’s health.	Two hours per day, actually I am in full time job which sucks 12 hours of my previous day time that’s too for full six days in a week
What do you think is the difference of being an Asian blogger?	If you carefully analyze you will see that majority of the BIG bloggers are from pure English speaking countries with USA and Australia leading the pack. My personal opinion is that, a big bulk of the second-rung bloggers are from Asia – predominantly from colonial, commonwealth nations. However, most Asian bloggers settle for short term mini ambitions and do not really try to make it big. This is the main difference from big time bloggers in the west vs Asian bloggers. In Asia, we have the unique advantage of understanding/speaking decent English and also we get resources pretty cheap (e.g. To get articles written on a daily basis via multiple bloggers, paid comments, theme designs/customizing etc). I would like to see the next Engadget or Tech Crunch coming out of Asian countries	Asian are doing good in the every sphere, we are making waves, we are no more helpless creature of the third world now. It’s good to see people give respect and follow religiously to Asian bloggers.
What’s your biggest goal for your blog?	Nothing! I know it’s bad but I would love to take life as it comes with respect to blogging. Two years ago, though, when I started DollarShower, I had some huge ambitious goals which were never achievable for a part time blogger.	I want to see my blog No. 1 blog in make money online niche in India and in the world
Pitch people why your blog is of a good read	I am a bad marketer (one reason why I am still with a development group) and hence never really did a good campaign for my blog. As a policy, I never ask people to subscribe or link to my blog for any favors received or even as prerequisites for contests that I am running. If people find any good consumable information there in, let them come back again – that’s my thinking!	This is the only blog in the world which teaches about how to make money online in simple plain English. Lots of people befitted by following my blog and doing well in online business, this is the best part, and I love to see when people email me about how helpful they find shanker Bakshi dot Com. Wish me Luck Malvin for my quest to glory
Give me a blog you admire and why?	I like Brian Clark of CopyBlogger because I thought his writing tips are pretty unique and not really repetitive. However, I hate him over-promoting the thesis theme. (Did you notice that I have imitated his theme styling?))	John Chow dot Com, He is the inspiration and role model for me, I follow him and sometime try to imitate him (evil me). I have learned a lot from him, I am lucky that he is always available to me over IM whenever I need to discuss anything about blogging and other stuff with him.

Questions	Ajith	Shanker
Describe yourself in less than 5 words?	90% Programmer and 10% Blogger	Self proclaimed dot Com Guru
What is your favorite breakfast?	What I like the most for breakfast is Idli – Sambar which is simple a South Indian breakfast dish. I also take one or two eggs upto four days a week. A cup of strong tea is a must for me for breakfast.	Gobi ka Parantha (Thats Chapati stuffed with cauliflower for you in English)
In a brief explanation, you are blogging about?	Well, what I write about is probably the most boring combo of SEO – Blogging Tips – Make Money Online that you get to see on every other blog these days 🙂 However, I try to do justice to my job by writing some unique posts at least one in five.	I usually write about how to Make Money Online and other technical facet of web 2.0, I am a fun loving guy, a kind hearted man who loves to help other.
Any story behind choosing that domain name?	I was after domain names related to money as I intended to write about make money online stuff alone at that time. When I was searching for the available domain names that included words like ‘money’, ‘cash’ etc I did not see anything good for two-worded names. Then I switched to ‘dollar’ and found this expired domain name quite accidentally. To be frank, I wasn’t aware of the fact that it was an expired domain name at that time.	More than anything else I want to see my name written on clouds, it can’t be better then Shanker Bakshi dot Com
How many uniques are you getting monthly?	Google Analytics shows that it’s about 5000 visitors per month though according to my host stats, it’s more than 30000 human visits (discounting bots, pings etc).	Sad to say but I am seeing a declining trend in traffic in recent time, I should give some more time everyday to my blog. It misses me a lot these days
What is your average blog income?	It is consistently above $400 in the last six to seven months and I already had four figure income three times during last one year. However, as a policy, I give away majority of what I earn as discounts and rebates to my referrals. This is because of the fact that blogging is only a part time activity for me.	Can’t say a fix amount it varies dramatically every month, I usually try to sell affiliate products through my Make Money Online blog so some time I made good sales and sometimes no sale at all. But it will be making me a wealthy stuff one day, that’s for sure.
How many hours do you spend on blogging?	Purely for blogging activities (publishing, link building, moderation etc) I spend about one to 1.5 hrs a day. However, I also do one or two hours of reading and research in addition. Initially I used to spend up to 7-8 hrs a day on blogging and promoting my blog but I found that it’s not worth to spend time like that at the expense of one’s health.	Two hours per day, actually I am in full time job which sucks 12 hours of my previous day time that’s too for full six days in a week
What do you think is the difference of being an Asian blogger?	If you carefully analyze you will see that majority of the BIG bloggers are from pure English speaking countries with USA and Australia leading the pack. My personal opinion is that, a big bulk of the second-rung bloggers are from Asia – predominantly from colonial, commonwealth nations. However, most Asian bloggers settle for short term mini ambitions and do not really try to make it big. This is the main difference from big time bloggers in the west vs Asian bloggers. In Asia, we have the unique advantage of understanding/speaking decent English and also we get resources pretty cheap (e.g. To get articles written on a daily basis via multiple bloggers, paid comments, theme designs/customizing etc). I would like to see the next Engadget or Tech Crunch coming out of Asian countries	Asian are doing good in the every sphere, we are making waves, we are no more helpless creature of the third world now. It’s good to see people give respect and follow religiously to Asian bloggers.
What’s your biggest goal for your blog?	Nothing! I know it’s bad but I would love to take life as it comes with respect to blogging. Two years ago, though, when I started DollarShower, I had some huge ambitious goals which were never achievable for a part time blogger.	I want to see my blog No. 1 blog in make money online niche in India and in the world
Pitch people why your blog is of a good read	I am a bad marketer (one reason why I am still with a development group) and hence never really did a good campaign for my blog. As a policy, I never ask people to subscribe or link to my blog for any favors received or even as prerequisites for contests that I am running. If people find any good consumable information there in, let them come back again – that’s my thinking!	This is the only blog in the world which teaches about how to make money online in simple plain English. Lots of people befitted by following my blog and doing well in online business, this is the best part, and I love to see when people email me about how helpful they find shanker Bakshi dot Com. Wish me Luck Malvin for my quest to glory
Give me a blog you admire and why?	I like Brian Clark of CopyBlogger because I thought his writing tips are pretty unique and not really repetitive. However, I hate him over-promoting the thesis theme. (Did you notice that I have imitated his theme styling?))	John Chow dot Com, He is the inspiration and role model for me, I follow him and sometime try to imitate him (evil me). I have learned a lot from him, I am lucky that he is always available to me over IM whenever I need to discuss anything about blogging and other stuff with him.

Head to Head 5, HowToMakeMyBlog vs. Blogussion

by Melvin · Oct 27, 2009

It’s been like decades ago since we had the last Bloggers head to head matchup! To view the past matchups we had, you can do so by clicking the Head to head category.

Ok, so this is probably my most favorite head to head matchup ever created here in this blog. Today, we would pit two bloggers who teach people how to become better bloggers. They do show people how to get things done by showing real examples, doing real case studies and really handing out superb value for their readers. And probably the best thing is, their blogs are AD-Free (unlike this blog), a thing that always amazes me.

So enough talking, I’m talking about Marko Saric from HowToMakeMyBlog.com and Alex from Blogussion.com. Here we go!

	Alex Frasier	Marko Saric
Describe yourself in less than 5 words?	Passionate and always looking forward	I’m blogging about blogging.
What is your favorite breakfast?	Over-easy egg, sausage and a a hash brown. 🙂	Something with eggs, peppers, tomato, avocado, mozzarella…
Any story behind choosing that domain name	On the blog I was going to create, I was going to be discussing blogging. So, I took the two words, merged them and formed Blogussion.com!	I am always thinking about what would my target audience type into Google when searching for my topic and “How to make my blog” was one of the best sounding…
Why did you choose a saturated niche?	It’s a niche I am okay talking about and can talk about for a long time. I don’t feel like the blogging tips niche is saturated however. It is crowded for sure, but the amount of quality blogging tips blogs out there are few.	I had some websites / blogs since late 1990’s and wanted to share what I have learned. If niche was saturated or not didn’t really affect my decision.
How hard is it to blog about blogging tips??	I am always learning new things about blogging every day. Some things just hit me in the oddest of places, and it is very easy to tie life into blogging (at least, that’s what I have found).	Not really hard, whatever you do to make your blog better is a blogging tip so there is always something to write about.
How many uniques are you getting monthly?	A few thousand, let’s just say	14344 unique visitors in August 2009.
How many hours do you spend with your blog?	It depends on what I am doing. If I am working on new things (like the theme I just recently reworked) then it could be a few hours a day. But writing for the blog takes no longer than two hours max.	I am on a one-blog-post-per-week schedule now so that doesn’t take more than couple of hours. Most time is spent on answering comments, answering emails and promoting the blog.
Any other venture aside from blogging?	I freelanced for a while, but I decided to quit because I could not handle all of the business I was getting..	Not at the moment, blogging only… I have some 3-4 blogs that I work on.
How much are you making with it?	I’m not freelancing at the moment, but I am going to be getting into theme markets and a few other markets. But, nothing really for me besides a couple hundred dollars a month from affiliate sales.	Very hard to say as it fluctuates a lot. I have some stats on my blog about it. But I hear Thesis Theme 2.0 is on the way out and Thesis is my main monetization method so that should affect my earnings.
How do you split your time with blogging, and your other stuffs?	I focus on usually one or two tasks a day when it comes to blogging. I work less, but harder when I blog so I can equalize my time spent on other activities.	It’s not very hard. When I blog I am in the blogging space, 100% concentration, but when I finish I am in the other stuff space and the blogging takes a backseat for a bit.
How do you persuade people to read your blog?	I make my designs as aesthetically pleasing as possible, write the catchiest headlines I can and cross my fingers that their attention is grabbed!	I write the best blog post I can and I send a tweet or two about it. The rest takes care of itself hopefully.
What’s the biggest goal for this blog?	I would like to earn some form of recurring income before I am 18 years old from my blog. Another thing I would like to do is meet with the people who play major roles in the growth of my blog in person.	To help me learn and improve on all things blogging, WordPress, web-design, CSS, marketing and so on.
Give me a blog you admire and why?	I enjoy reading Marko Saric’s HowToMakeMyBlog.com. I am a big fan of Marko and his blogging tips, and he is actually one of my biggest motivators.	Steve Pavlina I like because every time one of his posts hits my RSS newsreader I tend to spend an hour or two browsing his archives via his internal links structure. I hope I can have that effect on some of my visitors at some point.

Blogger Head To Head Round 4; It’s The Kids, This Time

by Melvin · Nov 19, 2008

Not really I am a big fan of long titles but well the part 4 of the blogger head to head has already come. This time the kids teenagers will take the centerstage. Not only they are young kids, but they are young and competitive boys out there who are not afraid with jumping into the online world. Rajaie is a guy from Rajaietalks which I believe has taken his blog into the next level w/his killer posts as well as hardcore tactics to increase his backlinks and gain readers as well. Ganesh on the flipside, from Blogsmartly is as impressive. He’s been busy w/school now but his presence is always felt with his comments and useful insights.

Anyway enough with the praises from me and let’s jump to their interesting tack on things.

	Rajaie	Ganesh
Describe yourself in less than 5 words?	Humble, Friendly, Adventurous, and Outgoing	studious kid with a taste for books and computers.
What is your favorite breakfast?	Some eggs, bacon, sausages, and waffles. On normal days I like to have some	Idly and Sambar (its the common breakfast in South India)
Why did you choose a saturated niche?	At the time I started blogging, I didn’t have the slightest clue of what a niche was! Hehe, but I could say that I chose this niche because I enjoy blogging about it	There were so many blogs giving blogging tips. But most of them wrote and re-wrote the same old content. I wanted to start a blog that gave smart tips on how to blog. I wanted to write content which would really be useful to the readers.
Any story behind choosing that domain name?	To be honest, I actually forgot why I chose www.rajaietalks.com for my blog. I guess it had something to do with me just talking about anything I had in mind.	I wanted a domain that instantly made it clear to the visitor that this wasn’t just any ordinary blog. 😉
How many uniques are you getting monthly?	It varies between every month. In September, I got over 60,000 uniques, but last month I got about 6,000+.	Around 500.
How many hours do you spend with it?	I actually spend hours and hours a day online, but less than 2 hours blogging. I’ve been trying to focus on my blog mostly these past few weeks, but I always seem to be distracted by other things online.	When I first started blogging, I used to spend long hours. Now, I usually spend 2-3 hours everyday blogging.
Do you read other blogs feeds? How many do you track?	Of course! 🙂 About fifteen or so, I try to keep it to a minimum so I don’t spend too much time reading other blogs instead of doing actual work.	I don’t use the feed reader. I prefer receiving updates via email. I subscribe to around 10-15 blogs.
How do you split your time with school and blogging and being a son?	Ahhh, this is a hard one. I try my best to finish my studies and homework before surfing the Internet. But no matter how hard I try to finish early, it just seems as though there is never enough time on my hands!	Ah! That’s a bit difficult. Since school and studies take up almost 12 hours daily, I usually spend 3 hours in the evenings and 1 hour in the morning for my blogs. As for my other activities like playing sports, games, reading, etc. I do them on weekends.
Any other ventures aside from blogging?	No, not the moment. But once I can figure out a schedule that will help me maintain my blog and keep up with life, I am planning on jumping into affiliate marketing, site flipping, and whatever else I seem to find interesting	I’m currently exploring microblogging sites like twitter and plurk. I’m planning on building sites that aren’t as time-consuming as blogging.
What makes your blog unique from others?	It’s written by me	I really put a lot of work and planning into my posts, so I guess I write unique (and perhaps enjoyable) posts. And there’s also the fact that I’m 14 which creates some buzz around the blogosphere.
What’s the biggest goal for this blog?	To become one of the top “make money online” blogs that actually teaches its readers how to make money online	I want to build up a large subscriber base and provide useful and top-notch content for all of my readers. That’s my biggest goal.
Give me a blog you admire and why?	Copyblogger. I simply love it because of the awesome style of writing Brian and the other authors have	ProBlogger. Because Darren gives some of the best tips on blogging and his blog shows that it is possible to make a living out of blogging. His blog was a big inspiration for me to start Blog Smartly.

Internet Babel vs The Germz, Head To Head 3

by Melvin · Aug 31, 2008

So this one came a little very late because of the season. The June part onwards seems to be the busiest part of the year as some people focus on their work, young ones like me go back to school and so. This round of head to head is a pretty interesting one. I really haven’t had much time picking a nice matchup. It’s pretty a little contrasting. Dave of the Internet Babel looks like a old older person than most of us while Germz cannot even watch rated x movies at cinemas! But well oh well, like other previous head to head this is a pretty interesting one. Check it out:

	Dave	Germz
Describe yourself in less than 5 words?	A handsome balding hunk.	Easily Bored Person.
What is your favorite breakfast?	Hmm – Crispy Bacon, scrambled egg and Toast.	Coffee, it’s the only thing I drink for breakfast. If there is no coffee I won’t eat breakfast.
How long have you been blogging?	Currently – 1 hour a day cos I have a lot of other work on. Hope to ramp it up a bit soon.	Usually an hour, I spent way more time researching new business ventures and freelancing.
Any story behind choosing that domain name?	I bought Internet Babel as a developed blog (but I liked the name).	My friends call me germz, and Germz.com was already taken.
How many uniques are you getting monthly?	July (my first month of owning the Blog) was about 2,000 UVs and 15,000 Page Views..	About 6000.
What is your average blog income?	hah 😉 Only 1 month in so very little to show at the moment. Ask me again in 12 months ;-).	About forty bucks per month, great thing that’s not my main source of income!
Do you read other blogs feeds? How many do you track?	– not a big consumer of feeds – prefer to visit the blogs i like and just Google around the web	I’m not a big fan of blog feeds, I don’t like having my email spammed with hundreds of emails per day with new articles. I hardly subscribe to any feeds unless I really like the content or I’m doing a favor for a friend. I currently only track about 3 or 4.
What are the other thing/projects that you are doing aside from blogging?	– Website development (got about 20 clients at the moment) – Helping develop some mining/data logging software – domain flipping/speculation – got a few websites of my own that bring in some Ad$en$e – Writing articles – drinking beer	Studying, and freelancing.
What keeps a blogger from making money from his blog?	a few things off the top of my head (in no particular order) – lack of time – lack of commitment – not enough belief in their own skills/ability – treating readers like idiots – no interaction with community – aiming for a saturated market/not finding a niche	I don’t use my blog to make money, I don’t think it’s easy to earn money from a blog unless your blog has a niche that’s easy to exploit. My only source of income for the blog comes from the advertisers. I only use the money to pay for hosting and aweber.
When does a blogger have to consider monetizing	Well, unless you’re doing it purely for the love of your subject and income is not a factor, then ideally you should be thinking about monetization before you start – it should be a part of the planning process. Money isn’t the key factor for a lot of Bloggers though so they shouldn’t get hung up about it.	As soon as possible, it’s best when you have some content otherwise no one will want to advertise from you.
What makes your blog unique from others?	Me. Hehe. Well, that’s the main reason – the blog is about my personal entrepreneur experiences and projects, which differ from other entrepreneurs, good and bad.	It’s written by me! 😀
What’s the biggest goal for this blog?	Apart from the things I mentioned above: – get the stats back up to where they used to be and then make them even better – increase the earnings (although that’s not my primary driver) – spread some useful knowledge – have some fun “	At the current moment I’m doing a very special project which I’m sure everyone will like.
Give me a blog you admire and why?	At the moment, I like reading the Net Fool – a lot of good info in there usually, and a nice ‘tone’ to it.	Thenetfool.com I visit his blog every time I get a chance, it’s very informative and I really like Jim’s point of view on most of his articles.

Blogote vs TechTreak, Clash of Two Tech Blogs

by Melvin · Jul 12, 2008

So today it is going to be the technology blogs turn to face each other in this week’s featured ‘Blogger Head to Head”. Technology blogs are blogs that blog about technology. Well, that was before. Now, technology blogs tend to expand their reach. As the technology expands it’s channels, so as the blogs. Just take a good look at techcrunch.

For this week, it’s going to be Blogote and TechTreak. Honestly I have a difficult time remembering (pronouncing) their names but hopefully I can get over this hump. Blogote is a blog that I have visiitng since months ago while Techtreak has also a great one which I am reading lately. Here are the questions I fired to their faces. 😉

	TechTreak	Blogote
Describe yourself in less than 5 words?	crazy, Contest(too many to say) freak, helper, smart, geek	Indifferent,Simply and Smart! 😉
What is your favorite breakfast?	Almost all indian foods	Bread butter Jam 🙂
Any story behind choosing that domain name?	Me and my brother just wanted to have a tech blog so we just searched through godaddy but all the good ones are booked then my brother came up with TechTreak(we still dont know what treak is ) and we took it, at first it is a bit tough to remember but after some weeks we just getting good response and we made it so far!	yes, Blog + promote = Blogote
Why did you choose the technology niche?	Coz am a big tech freak and just wanna try the lastest gadgets so it will be fun to blog about them!	Tech is a part of life,So experiencing the Tech and writing about it is not a tough task.
How many hours per day do you spend blogging?	Almost 3 to 4 hours but in busy day i cant blog for even 4 days	Not even 1 hour 🙁
How many uniques are you getting monthly?	14000 before 3 months stats but now due to some personal(father expired) problems i just stopped everything and now started to get on the track back(its really hard)!	First month I received 16k+ http://blogote.com/2008/site-news/blogote-june-2008-monthly-wrap-up.html
What is your average blog income?	around $800 before 3 months but now just $250 due to bad days!	This is the beginning.. I will post about them in the coming months!
Do you read other blogs feeds? How many do you track?	Yeah i love to read others! i have more than 50+	No I dont read blog feeds.I do visit some of my friends blog to pass my time.
What keeps a blogger from making money from his blog?	Content + Traffic + Good Circle and with good management!	Motivation and discouragement..These two things make a blogger reach any of his goals.
When does a blogger have to consider monetizing	While having a great content, traffic and decent link love	After writing first 10-20 posts,he has to find out his niche and then Quality seo readable posts will do the job.Also submission to social sites is recommended for every blogger.
What makes your blog unique from others?	Style in posts, good design(some self made ), covers almost all interesting stuff like mixed juice!	I have No answer,I cant say if my blog is really unique bcoz Blogote is yet to be discovered and nourished.
What’s the biggest goal for this blog?	ha…biggest!? almost every month is a sucessfull month for TechTreak coz as a contest freak i try to get on as much as possible and try to make most of my content with a better traffic each month so it just going to increasing! But to the most hardest part i ever faced is face off with johnchows blog review, i dont know about johnchow that much untill then, when i seen him in a RuffPC(worth $3000) contest, that is the month i tried to make most of my blog to get nore votes and win but with both our votes euqual the whole contest rules and schedules are changed because of us but sadly i lost it and it still hurts(i even cant says that tons of xxxxxx comments i got from a month from JC fans) me the most! but the only hope is one day i’ll be there to break the chains!!!	For now it is to break the traffic shackles obviously to be the best blog with quality content.
Give me a blog you admire and why?	Problogger.net since in the beginning i learnt a lot from darren	I don’t admire any blogs,why to admire a blog when you have the capability to blog better than others..