Nuffnang Blogopolis 2012

Most of us bloggers are aware about the presence of Nuffnang, among the most active blog advertising community not only in Malaysia but also a few part of Asia. They have offices in Singapore, Philippines, Australia and Hong Kong. Did I miss out any office?

I have been a member of Nuffnang since April 2007 base on my blog registered with Nuffnang. However if the objective of making money blogging and have advertisement on my blog, I think I better forget about it. My last cash out was, I think sometimes in 2009 and since then, there is 0 cents in my account. I am not sure whether there are visitors who click on the advertisement post by Nuffnang.

Now the latest project by Nuffnang is the Blogopolis. It will be organised on 14th July 2012 at The Concorde on Jalan Sultan Ismail. Mmmm, at first I thought of attending but when I saw the price of the ticket, I had to think twice. Its a one day affair. Click HERE for info on the project.

If bloggers who wish to attend, they can buy tickets at the Nuffnang office in Kuala Lumpur's Heritage Row (behind Imperial Hotel KL).

Well known speakers will be invited to share their experiences and among them are Xiaxue, Kenny Sia, Beautiful Nara, KY and Hua Bin to name a few. Click HERE for speakers.

Well, for sure, I am not attending.

Blog Day 31 August

I receive an email once in a while from Nuffnang and this one is about 6th Blog Day that Nuffnang will be celebrating. Thanks for the email and now I knew that there is such a day dedicated to Blog.
As requested
1. BLUE LADYBLOG
I came to know about this blog and blogger when I attended the  Blogfest Asia 2010 in Penang organised by Bloggercon. The blogger behind this is Kounila Keo, a Cambodian Lady and she’s a AFP Reporter,  who had the opportunity travelling in performing her job. Being a Cambodian and as we knew how English were spoken, I found out that this lady speaks English quite fluently. That goes also to her writings. Being a journalist in Cambodia, a once war torn nation, she speaks out her mind, “ Cambodia seems much worse, and as I said among them all, Cambodian media are only into politics and stuff. Not a day goes by without journalists writing up political pieces just to satisfy a certain politician”.
This blog’s tagline is “It’s not just another Cambodian blog and if you want to read about Cambodian Politics, lifestyle and mind of a Cambodian women, don’t miss this blog. Being a journalist, her posts were written in a journalistic style.

This blogger with Kounila and an Indonesian blogger at Blogfest Asia 2010

2. THE WORLD IS WONDERFUL
This blog is managed by a blogger from France by the name of Alexandre from Aix en Provence, South of France.He changed his life from a network engineer and parted with all his belongings to travel around the world. This blog is written from his perspective. He is also a photographer and that helps him a lot in making his postings more understandable. If you likes travelling, this blog can be one of the thousands of travel blog that can give you ideas and inspirations.
3. VERNON GO
This is a blog from the Philippines moderated by Vernon Joseph Go an Industrial Engineer, Blogger, Content Marketer, Social Media Specialist, and Frustrated Entrepreneur exploring both the business and internet world with big plans and great enthusiasm. Freelance web consultant and software engieer.Being involded in social development and youth programs for nation building, he actively promote the use of the nee media for community-building in Mindanao. Hence, Vernon go is geared towards that objectives.
In this blog readers can read about food, travel, social media, events, financial journey etc. If you wan to read something away from Manila, visit Vernon Go.
4. AETHEN
This blog is from The Philippines. He was also one of the participants at Blogfest Asia 2010.The blogger is Mark Aethen Agana. If Vernon Go writes from the Island of Cebu, Mark is stationed in Metro Manila.Aethen is a testimony of his daily experience and views.

 

5. HEATHER ON HER TRAVEL
This is travel blog written by a lady, Heather who record her travel experience. Her blog description “Travel inspiration and destination information with travel tales, photos, videos and podcasts from around the world”. made me choose to post it here is that it contains different medium of presentation: writings, photography, video and podcasting. She blended all the different medium under one blog and visitor can experience all these just under ‘one roof’. At the time of writing this post, this blog is ranked 35th under Top 150 General Travel Blogs at blogranks. 1,292,772 unique monthly visitors.
6. LIFECRUISER
This is again another travel blog that is in the Top 150 General Travel Blogs at blogranks. Eventhough it is ranked 65th, this blog has 1,456,384 unique visitors monthly just three ranks above Kyspeaks, a Malaysian blogger.  This blog is about a Swedish couple who is passionate about travelling, writing and photography.They share their experience travelling to more than 20 countries in Europe, North and South America.Their posts are accompanied with beautiful photos and wonderful information worth reading if you are just an armchair travelogue or looking for ideas to go and see those places yourself.

Changes On My Advertisement Banners

I joined a Advertlets, a blog advertising community  since 9th July 2007 at about the same time I registered with another company, Nuffnang. Between these two it seems the latter is more aggressive and  actively organise events for members and is usually open for all. The former too did the same but I see that many of their events cater to close friends and only a few open to other bloggers.  

Being business rivals, these companies categorize their members into normal members and premium members. Premium members earn more from advertisement posted on their blogs. 

At first I pasted both company's advertisement space on my blog but after sometimes it seems that only one of them actively posted ads on my blog and that made me pull down the other company's banner, even though I did make some money but not eligible to cash out. I really felt left out by the company and that being one of the reason I pulled down their banner but kept my membership intact. 

My reaction upgrade my status on the other company from a normal member to Gliteratti member with better perks. However it did not last long enough and I lost the status after I place another advertising banner which seems very slow in generating income (I might pull down the banner one day, maybe if it just does not give me the edge) and then I lost my Gliteratti status. It happen at a wrong timing because I lost the status (and did not realise it) just before I requested my payout and it took me two month before my check is processed instead of 30 days for Gliteratti member. After all I had already received my cheque. 

After losing my status, I though what the heck now. So why not put up the first advertisement banner again with all the hope I will get advertisement to balance up. Everything is trial and error. If it is not successful, then why not make more changes. After all, I am paying nothing for all that. So now you can find three banners on my blogs.

@ BlogFest.Asia 2010 -

It was a fruitful weekend for me at the 2nd BlogFest.Asia 2010 held at Wawasan Open University (WOU), Penang. The Fest organised by dotasia.org and mybloggercon.com. The two days at the conference, I learn some new things although some of it is a bit too technical for me as I consider myself not a tech geek. It was all about the new media and empowering it into the limelight as it is the future of communication, to me. The young generation or I am labeling them as cyber generation is slowly overtaking the IT generation. 

I was born before Malaysians knew nothing about computers and was exposed to the my first 386 computer in 1983 when I bought a desktop for RM 3,800. It was considered luxury then. Since then I never look back and today into my second half century of living, I consider myself a computer addict but an end user only. I have been blogging since 2006 after reading about the tsunami on jeffooi's screenshot.  

I was wondering at first whether I am fit to join the Fest since I am a Malay and the organiser is a Mandarin based blogging community and catering to the bloggers who writes in Mandarin . Another lingering question as to my participation is will I fit in the younger generation due to my age. However, I made a bold move to go ahead.  The first morning I walk from Continental Hotel on Penang road to WOU for two reason. First to take some shots for the Blog Penang contest that I intend to take part and secondly maybe I can get to see the secretariat and take my participant name tag. When I reached the security guard and inquired whether there is the secretariat at the Uni and he said, “Depa baru saja belah.” It might sound rude to first timer who hear the word belah that literally meant had went off but for me being a Kedahan, it is just a normal thing. However after staying in Kuala Lumpur for some years, it was a bit of a “culture shock”. So, my mission on the first day morning failed.

I attended the first day welcome dinner hosted by Ministry of Tourism Malaysia  at QE II. Before landing in the island, I was thinking QEII is some posh restaurant by the seaside somewhere near the Esplanade. I knew that there’s a restaurant there. It was all wrong because QEII is a restaurant that serves Western cuisine located at Tanjung City Marina, Church’s Street Pier. Its a place for fine dining and chilling down while being caressed by the cool sea breeze.

The dinner was hosted by Tourism Malaysia and of course I felt lost because I did not know anyone and being sitting alone just enjoying the food and fill after fill of juice. I don’t drink of course. Being a participant I obliged to the  host and I felt a bit relieve when I saw a few Malay participants in the crowd even though I did not make any  advancement to get to know them.

The second day start with a keynote address by Peter Herford from Chung Kong School of Journalism and Communication who do open up our mind about changes…….

During the breakout session I join the Multimedia blogging and its future by Podcaster John Ong and moderated by Willy Wah. Even though I have heard about podcast before but the session that I attended gives me a clearer picture what podcasting all about. It was a video conferencing session between Willy, the participants and John Ong who is in the United States. Note: I am listening to Ongline podcast Ongline #369 Politics to Diet with Vertitable Vergo. Now I am clear what podcast is all about and my conclusion, one need some studio skills, fluent in your podcasting medium , adequate knowledge in the area discussed, good communication skills and a pleasant voice to be a DJ online.  This is the differences between podcasters and bloggers.

The next session was by Ms Masjaliza Hamzah, ED of CIJ Malaysia ; Journalistic Values For Documenting Events via your blogs and followed by Use of New Media in Education by Wawasan Open University and Shantou University lecturer Mr Jeremiah Foo.

I do not know whether there is a shuttle bus from WOU or I missed the bus.  I did not get any message from the secretariat actually. I think the secretariat has to look into this area of communication for future meetings. Since I already missed the bus, I was forced to wait for dinner hosted by Penang State Government in conjunction with Mybloggercon Awards and Asia Blogger Choice Award.

Third Day starts with presentation by representatives from participating countries. The session do give some information about internet and the new media of these countries and followed by an interesting forum discussed by a panel that hail from the two different divide of political parties in Malaysia. I can’t quite remember the names of both panels but one is an MP for Bukit Bendera while the other from MCA.

Three workshops followed. The first that I attended was Wordpress Multisite . However I left early for another workshop since it did not suit my needs and join another concurrent workshop about organising people in the cyber and real world. 

Photography and Travelogue through blogs ends the workshop sessions. There was a good discussion about  the topic since photo of one of the ingredient of an interesting blog post. However I did not learn much eventhough I am very interested in the topic and from my opinion the secretariat should have invited more successful photo bloggers to share their experiences and expertise.

My suggestion: Since mybloggercon uses the '”my” that represent Malaysia, I think such activities should be open up to all bloggers irrespective of language in their blog postings so that it will reflect the true identity of Malaysia as a multiracial country. Let us show to the world how blogging and the new media as an example and tools of unity irrespective of race, religion and creed and fight for the common cause.

There are still many more local blog celebrities (not celebrity blogger) from Malaysia who has been successful such as Kennysia, Nicole Cocokiss, Redmummy, BeautifulNara, as an example to come and share their experiences in punning traffic and making a living from blogging.

Maybe next time can invite Timothy Thiah too from Nuffnang and share out how Nuffnang can help bloggers earn part time as bloggers. We have to move on from blogging as a hobby to blogging for a living.

Liason, Please in future do not leave out “foreign locals” in future as we need your help too.

Conclusion: I lift my hat to the whole member of secretariat for doing a good job making this Fest a success. You have made Malaysia proud with your effort since this is an International event. 

Note: I am the one in the centre wearing the berretta cap. Picture credit to John Shen Lee.

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