X-Mas gift for bloggers from MaxBlogPress

Pawan Agrawal of MaxBlogPress is giving an early Christmas present and it is targeted towards blogger. If you have spend some time trying to make money with Wordpress blogs you probably have heard about MaxBlogPress. They are renowned for there amazing Wordpress plugins that help you achieve lots of things. Some of his products sell as high as 147$ so I'm sure he's making a decent amount of money from them. This Christmas he's bundling together some of his best products and giving them out for an insanely low price. The products include some of there top products like Subscriber Magnet, Ninja Affiliate, Wordpress Wizard, $365k traffic formula and Blog traffic blueprint. This is a great deal and you really should take advantage of. Check out MaxBlogPress Christmas deal review and quickly make the decision.

My Squidoo experiment continues

Squidoo has become a nice way to earn some money while being a great source for back links. In Internet Marketing if you have access to back links then you can make money much easier than most other. Squidoo pages are a great source for back links and as an added bonus you can make some money too. I'm starting to see some Amazon sales as well from Squidoo so this is something I think that has good potential when it comes to money making. Another great thing is with Squidoo you can write about almost anything you like, so you are not limited to one subject like in a blog. So if you have knowledge of something but it isn't worth starting a blog over then a Squidoo page might be just the thing you need.

My experimenting with Squidoo continues and today I created a Squidoo lens about hot Sri Lankan actress Nehara Pieris. There is nothing special about the lens and I haven't acquired any back links yet as well. Just waiting to see how this will rank for the specific search term and how much traffic it will pull as well. I have a feeling it will do pretty well :-).

Refresh Colombo - November edition

Yesterday I attended the November edition of Refresh Colombo, which could be roughly classified as a monthly gathering of techies who are willing to share there knowledge and expertise. There were four presentation planned for that day and I was especially interested in the presentation about "Adopting social media in local companies". Unfortunately there wasn't enough time so there were only three presentations, but those were great presentations and you can definitely learn a lot from them.
The first presentation was done by @Chamara of Apramana and it was about "Benefits of web standards to your visitors, clients and you.". The only kind of web designing I have done is changing some CSS in my blog templates and it was fairly easy. So it was amusing to hear how it was done in the old days and how hard it was those days. After hearing those I felt really glad we have web standards now. Then he talked about how to validate your websites and the advantages of doing that. Being an Internet marketer one point that got me thinking was, IT HELPS in Search engine rankings. If you are a web designer then there were some great things to take from this presentation.
The next presentation was done by @Devaka of WSO2 and it was about "Being more than just the Ordinary". Its no wonder this guy is in marketing because he sure knows how to sell a product and to capture an audience. He talked about how we can compete with the rest of the world in terms of quality and showed how much Sri Lanka, as a country has contributed to the creation of different technologies. There were some amazing facts like per capita contribution to open source, how we have consistently performed well in Google summer of code and lot of other facts. He also showed how there business module is sustainable compared to most other outsourcing companies in Asia.
The last presentation was done by @Gihan of GTS and it was about "Creating games in Sri Lanka and Optimistic entrepreneurial spirit".He seems to have money to spare because he gave away Rs.1000, but not to everyone, but to someone who wanted to grab the note from his hand. It sure was a unique way to demonstrate why you should grab your opportunities. His session was entertaining and interactive, which is not surprising since he is into game development. His company created Colombo ride, the first Sinhalese mobile game. Now they are releasing Colombo Ride 3D. He talked about gaming industry in Sri Lanka, History of Colombo Ride, more released coming from there company and challenged faces by his team when developing and marketing games.
If I can summarize this edition of Refresh Colombo in one word, it is "INSPIRATION". Attending this session made me feel proud to be a Sri Lankan, it is amazing to see how much we have achieved in the software and technology field with a relatively low resource pool. Also there were enough examples of how successful you can be if your are willing to take a risk and follow your dreams. If you are looking to do your own thing and looking for advice then this is the place to be, where young entrepreneurs hang out and share there ideas. Looking forward to the next edition :-)

The much talked about visiting card of Gihan, courtesy - @InduNan

Colombo Ride Game



Cool things to have -

How can we improve a great event like Refresh Colombo ? Well one thing I can think of is having there presentations available online. The best place I can think of is there website. This gives the attendees a chance to reference past material and and look up on points they might have missed. Also then the presenters can prepare a more detailed presentation with more points, helpful resources etc as well. So they can go through the presentation quickly and give the audience more resources to follow up.

Efficient way to manage bills

Managing bills can be a tedious thing, especially if you are not a very organized person. The problem with paper bills is they are easily misplaced and even if you have them filed away it is not easy to find them quickly and it certainly isn't accessible from everywhere like office. This is where an online bill management service comes in handy. One good thing I found for this is Shoeboxed, where managing your bills is simple as taking a picture. You take a picture of your bill and upload it to your Shoeboxed account and they will human verify and do the data entry for you. All you have to do is log onto your Shoeboxed account and you can view the sorted and categorized bills. They also provide a iPhone application to manage your bills free of charge. Looks like a great service to try out and definitely a time saver.

Analytic can give you great keyword ideas

While optimizing a client website for search engines I went through the list of keywords that is already pulling them traffic and I was pleasantly surprised to find some popular names in Sri Lanka in the keyword list. I started working on that angle and immediately managed to draw highly targeted traffic that my client would love to have. Finding and predicting search patterns hard to do, which is why top SEO companies have special software to do this. However affording there services is a bit beyond a small business owner so most of the time they need to look elsewhere for there search engine optimization efforts. This is where a free but hugely important tool like Google Analytic comes in handy. Search engine optimization in Sri Lanka is still a growing business but I can see some future potential in it.

Planning a wedding is a nightmare

Looking at some of my mates I can get a brief idea how hard it is to plan a wedding. The look on there faces when the big day comes close is pretty amusing. Although it looks simple there are so many thing to look into and it is just too much for two persons to handle. Sri Lankan weddings are a complicated affair anyway, from finding a suitable hotel to picking the guest list to find tuning the wedding dress, these things can be overwhelming for anyone. I guess that is one reason why the couple seems so relieved after the wedding.
The cost of a wedding is also increasing by the day. Its amazing how much of an extra cost it takes simply to add liquor to the occasion. Most now prefer to arrange a small drinking party for those who drink and avoid serving hot drinks at the wedding. Another very costly things is wedding photography, it can cost you from 50k to 300k, depending on your preference. I know its once in a lifetime things but spending that much on one occasion just for photography is insane. Money rules I guess

The search for data entry jobs

After checking out my Google analytics account I found it strange that more people search for data entry jobs more than ways to make money online. Ranking for them doesn't earn me much money but they do provided some authority when it comes to making money online in Sri Lanka. Considering how hard it is to secure a data entry job, especially for someone who has no experience in the field, I personally think it is a waste of time. But just to check out the trends I wrote an article about online data entry jobs in Pakistan. Even though it is ranked around 8-10 in Google it still gets about 15-20 visitors from Google. It would be interesting to see how much traffic it will get if it comes to 1-3 places in Google and how much money this simple page can earn as well.

Social GoodDay at Refresh Colombo

I got an invitation from @rohanvim to join Social Good Day Colombo meet up, and since I was interested in networking with fellow Sri Lankans I attended the event yesterday. The event was held as a part of RefreshColombo, a monthly gathering of tech enthusiasts.
For me the highlight of the event was "Building an Effective Online Marketing Platform" presentation done by Niranka T. Perera of eMarketingEye. Since I'm also interested in online marketing there were some great points to take away from that presentation, and I will try to attend RefreshColombo meet ups as much as I can as well.
Up next was the presentation by Nandasiri Wanninnayake, founder of Horizon Lanka foundation. It was great how a rural village 50-60Km from Anuradhapura managed to overcome all the hardship thrown at them and build a effective Internet portal to the outside world. It is by no means just having Internet, student were thought English via Internet and it has grown to such an level that volunteers from other countries come and teach these rural village children. It is simply amazing how one man managed to do all this without much help from anyone.
Then there was a discussion about how we can use social media to improve the lives of others. It was kick started by Sanjana of GroundViews. I guess the simple message was act upon your tweets, tweeting about social good etc is easy but acting upon them is the hard part. There were some initiatives taken to start a social good movement. I'm looking forward to the ideas that will come up once the forum is set up.
As a whole it was a good experience and a well organized event. @cocoveranda was kind enough to produce some nice refreshments and  any event that starts with refreshments is a good event ;)

Sri Lanka chosen as the second best travel destination by National Geographic Channel

Tourism in Sri Lanka got a tremendous boost when National Geographic channel names it as the second best place to visit in the world. This was a great point to mention in my squidoo lens about visiting Sri Lanka. The great thing is there are some expert opinion about why you should choose Sri Lanka and of course there is the mention of beautiful white beaches and wildlife sanctuaries. Check out the below link for the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-WfXSacm84

Randiv Affair and the pussies at SLC

As expected Indian media blew the whole Randiv affair out of proportions. In a country when media themselves organize burning of effigies to get publicity this is understandable but what wasn't understandable was the reaction by Sri Lanka Cricket. For a simple no ball they appointed a committee and did a full investigation and found Randiv and Dilshan guilty. This has nothing to do with upholding the spirit of Cricket it was all about protecting the goodwill between BCCI who happens to be just about only source of income SLC has.This will create a odd situation for Dilshan though because he is a member of Delhi Daredevils which Shewag plays for. Because the incident is much publicized I'm sure the media will do something to remind us of this unique situation in DD as well. I hope Dilshan will be in the opening line up whenever DD plays next because that is just another story waiting to be sensationalized by the media.

The Expendables pretty much as expected

The Expendables was an ok movie although I have no idea how it got an imdb rating of 7.5 when some great movies such as "The Notebook" only has an imdb rating of 8. This was a typical Stallone flick with lots of shooting, cutting and blowing up and nothing else. Although there is a big crew involved in the movie only Stallone and Statham and to some extent Jet-Li plays any significant role. I really couldn't understand the role played by Mickey Rourke although he does tell a long boring story to Stallone. As mentioned before there is not much substance in the story and you never really get attached with any character to give a damn about what happens to them. Anything that could be blown up is blown to pieces and as any Stallone flick there are lots of dead bodies. Only good thing I can think of in the movie is Jason Stathoms acting. The movie is watchable just don't expect a classic with this crew.

Ricky having a terrible time at the moment

Ricky our pet is having a terrible time these days,his smelly dog ears are getting a bit irritating and because of constant scratching there some wounds as well. All the symptoms point to yeast infection so hopefully some natural treatments will make this go away. With the prize of veterinarians these days it costs a small fortune to get your dog checked :-(

The Last Air Bender - one big screw up

I'm haven't seeing the Avatar cartoon so I thought it wouldn't be that bad for me unlike the people who are fans of the cartoon but it was a big disappointment. There is nothing in the movie I can think of that is worth appreciating, the acting was not that great to say the least, directing was awful with actors always looking a bit lost with what to do and the story line was going too fast for my liking. There was no character build up or anything like that making it one of the most boring movies I have watched.

Central highlands added as the eighth world heritage site in Sri Lanka

UNESCO has declared Central highlands of Sri Lanka as a world heritage site thus increasing the count of world heritage sites in Sri Lanka to eight. The Central highlands included the Peak wilderness wildlife sanctuary, Horton plains national park and Knuckles conservation forest. All these were in the UNESCO tentative list and are categorized as cloud forests. They are also home to some of the endangered species and a extraordinary range of floras and faunas.

Life without Murali

The second test at the SSC gave a glimpse at what it would be like to play test cricket without Murali. Admittedly the pitch was a very flat one and even great Murali might have struggled to pick a wicket but he was sorely missed by Sangakkara. Things could have being a bit different if Prasanna Jayawardena hold on to the catch given by Tendulkar but the opportunity was missed and the little master capitalized. One thing that Sri Lankans could be happy about is that they created some opportunities and generally created few more chances than the Indian bowlers. I hope Lasith Malinga plays the third test because otherwise the fast bowling also looks a bit bleak. You need Malinga's variety and extra pace in a flat wicket like this. Dilhara Fernando was a big disappointment with spraying the ball all over the place sometimes, In flat pitches like these you need to be patient and able to bowl a good line and length and tie the batsmen down which he clearly failed to do. Hope for a better showing in the third test and a much more sporty pitch.

Finding Data Entry Jobs

Since some of my articles rank well for Data Entry job in Sri Lanka I used to get lots of comments and mails inquiring about data entry or any internet job in Sri Lanka. Some have even forwarded there resume to me for reference. Since I don't have data entry jobs to give out I was looking for a place where I can direct people to get a data entry job. Although there are quite a few data entry job opportunities out there most of them require you to pay some amount. Finding a free but reliable data entry job is a problem. In my latest article about Data Entry jobs in Sri Lanka I addressed that issue to an extent. read it to find some sources where you can find jobs for free.

Online businesses in Sri Lanka are growing

In the last few days I got a fee emails about the Geegain advertising program. Some were just inquiring what it is all about while some were spam mails asking me to join through there links. Curiosity got the better of me so I decided to check out the program and what is all about. Check out my Geegain advertising program review if you want to learn more about the program but what interested me was that it was owned by Sri Lankans. Well I cant say for sure it is owned by a Sri Lankan because there was not much information but the contact details and addresses were all Sri Lankan. This is another indication that online businesses in Sri Lanka and growing and more and more people are getting involved in online activities.

Travel industry is growing and oppurtunities for everyone

With the end of the war then number of tourists coming to Sri Lanka has increased dramatically. It is not surprising since Sri Lanka already had all the things a tourist can possible hope for but the only hindrance being the war. With the growth of travel industry opportunities have come up for more people and this is not only for people in travel industry. I have started writing some articles about travel tips and places of interest in Sri Lanka and they seem to be performing very well. My lens about Must visit places in Sri Lanka it targeted towards tourists and it already performing well in search engines. I wrote a hub pretty much on the same topic titled Must see places in Sri Lanka and it is also doing well in search engines and getting traffic for certain keywords. I'm getting some Adsense clicks from them as well and it could be a good opportunity to make some extra money.I hope the rise in tourism continues for a long while.

Don't get greedy when doing FOREX trading

I'm starting to get more and more questions about FOREX trading in Sri Lanka on my Make money blogging blog. I always refer them to two of the previous posts I have written regarding FOREX trading.But the problem is not many seem to have the patience to spend some time learning the basics of trading. Soon as I send them to babypips training course which is given for free they grumble about how big the course content is. All those things are important because although you can make some good money with FOREX it is easily possible to lose money with it as well. Learn the basics and don't be greedy and you will have success from FOREX.

When will we be able to receive money from PayPal

For a long time Sri Lankan PayPal accounts were not able to receive money. It seems that PayPal don't mind sending money from Sri Lanka but they don't want to receive money from Sri Lanka. In one of my blog posts about how to receive money for PayPal send only accounts I talked about a workaround for this problem but there is only so much you can do with an unverified account. You cant set up a business , there are sending limits etc. As long as you are only receiving money it will be alright but then again you can't do business , especially an online business without paying online.
Although we have hundreds of ministries in Sri Lanka I couldn't think of a ministry that can handle this type of situation. Maybe its something that is got to do with telecommunication. However if the government got involved then there might be a possibility of this happening. Maybe we online marketers should do something about this or we could consider alternative solution to PayPal. Problem is most online companies are only using PayPal :-( .

Sanath please go

It was sad to see such a great player , one who has done so much for the cricket in Sri Lanka failing so badly in the T20 world cup in West Indies. The reality is Sanath is just not good enough , his reflexes have slowed down and facing good fast bowling is a nightmare for him. With all this drawbacks it was foolish to keep playing him but the common view is that Sangakkara doesn't have the authority to drop him. Sanga almost resigned when Sanath was chosen to go for the T20 world cup so it is obvious Sanga doesn't want him there. The sad thing is that it effects the morale and the unity of the team. None of the want them there but no one can do anything about that. It is never too late for Sanath who was one of the greatest servants of Sri Lankan cricket to leave the field head held high , Sanath I hope you leave instead of dragging something down that you worked so hard to build

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

Search Engine Optimization in Sri Lanka

Recently I wrote an article about search engine optimization in Sri Lanka. I was prompted to write this because one of my friends were charged a hefty peace for some consultation. In reality the did some basic on site SEO and they didn't even mention about the link building part that is needed for ranking higher in search engines. As in most places few shady companies are giving a bad impression about SEO companies here in Sri Lanka. The reality is basic SEO are not that hard to master , but fine tuning your website and link building is the somewhat harder part. But for established companies here in Sri Lanka it is not that important to go for high end SEO solutions.

Writing Hubs about Sri Lanka

The income from Hubpages is slowly on the rise and the hubs that seems to perform well are the ones mostly related to Sri Lanka. I have put up some hubs about some places I visited in Sri Lanka and they seem to be getting lot of attention. The hub about Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage and Gods Paradise nature resort already got some comments which goes to show that people are searching for them. By far the one that seems to be performing well is the hub about Cinnamon lodge hotel in Habarana. If I keep up this rate I see hubpages becoming a very steady earner in the future.

Tourism on the rise

With the end of the war there is a huge rise in tourists coming to Sri Lanka for vacations which is not surprising since Sri Lanka is such a beautiful country where they can spend a holiday for a relatively low cost. For such a small Island the diversity displayed is amazing. From a 3 hour drive you can go 35C Colombo to 18C Nuware Eliya. Then there are the beautiful beaches all around the country , archeological sites like Anuradhapura , World heritage sites like Sigiriya and Sinharaja rain forest. The number of things you can do here is simply amazing which is the main reason for the huge influx of tourists. The downside is not the somewhat good hotels are now almost off limits for the locals. This is especially hard when you are trying to organize office trips team trips etc. Good thing is relatively unknown but still quality places like Gods Paradise Nature resort are getting more local visitors, It just goes to show one mans gain is another mans loss.

Josa Paradai,Peta Victory

Well it took 32 years but we won the battle of the saints and to cap things off we won the 50 over encounter last Saturday. Because of the big match win it was very hard to get ticked for the 50 over game and Oval was not large enough to support such a huge crowd. As we do every year this year also the 2002 A/L batch organized a package. The T-shirt printed for the occasion was very nice but 2k was a bit too much for the whole things , but I don't think people care that much since they get to meet after a long time.
There was a huge parade before the start to celebrate the big match victory. The parade was a great example of the power of Facebook , it started as a FB event with only few entries and all of a sudden it took off. There were more than 50 vehicles for the parade and it was a great site to see all those Peter's flags waving.
As usual it was great to see friends from school days. 50 over is almost the only time we ever get to meet nowadays which is why I hate to miss it and why I was so sad after missing it last time. There were trouble to get into the stands and because Oval was such a small ground there is always going to be crowd trouble. It was amusing to see some old guys trying to clear the people in the boundary line so they can watch the match in a relaxing manner. I felt sorry for them but unfortunately most just come to have some fun , watching the match is secondary.
The greatest moment of the day was when we hit the winning runs , the crowd ran into the ground waving the college flags and it was a moment to behold. The sheer joy of it cannot be explained. All in all had a great time and hopefully we can repeat this next year :-)

General Election Coming Up

As usual in Sri Lanka as soon as the presidential election is over the general election is coming up. It is very amusing to watch people who supported each other in the presidential election now going up against each other. It is really funny to see UNP candidates having a go at the JVP. I think this general election will spell doom for JVP and they have wisely teamed up with General Sarath Fonseka. It is really sad to see the current state of the such a heroic figure. It just goes to show how downright dirty our politics and politicians really are. Government is giving there best to get 2/3 in the parliment so they can change the constitution and by looking at the way current there using the power now I really don't feel like giving them 2/3 in the parliment.
I think one of the main reasons it is hard to develop this country is this constant power struggle. From morning to night the opposition is looking for ways to topple the government so goverment have to be constantly be on the lookout for such a coup. If the politicians focus 10% of that energy to develop this country this will be a much better place to live. I can't forsee this happening in the near future and that is the most sadest thing of them all.

New very simple Theme

Although its nice to have fancy looking themes you should never underestimate the power of simple elegant looking themes so I decided to go for a a new theme. This one I found out through a link in one of my LinkedIn groups. And after testing it out I must say it is pretty impressive. And even if you are not technical person there are clear instructions on how to modify the template to your liking. Although simle looking its packed with great features. You can link to your favorite social profiles , has a navigation panel that is easy to modify and has a four column footer so you can fill it with almost anything. You can find it in this free web templates site , there are few more on offer so you should check them out even if you don't like this one.

Whats the biggest problem in Sri Lanka

Politics bore me and I have no interest in following what is happening in the field of politics. But how much you try you just can't avoid it. So I usually get to hear to same story with different views plenty of times. After listening to them for a while I can only come to one clear conclusion. No one is certain about what is truth and what is false and that seems to be the biggest problem of them all. There doesn't seem to be any unbiased trustworthy media. So everyone is clinging to there own opinions and its hard or almost impossible to change since there are no verified facts. I sometimes wonder whether I'm stupid to ignore the things around me just because they aren't affecting me yet , maybe they will affect me later and I will regret it. So far the political turmoil surrounding this country doesn't seem to affect me and hopefully it will never affect me

Finally got rid of those annoying folders

For some reason after I installed Microsoft Sql Server there were few folders with hexadecimal name left over. Strangely they were created not in the drive I installed MSS. It wasn't easy to find the solution with lots of different recommendations , some even suggesting you buy some software. But I found a simple solution in , How to remove annoying hexadecimal folders , this stuff works and it want cost you a cent.

The Party Mentality

Tomorrow is the the election and judging by people's reaction nobody is sure who will become the president. Although there are some people who have not yet decided upon who to vote I think most have made up there minds long ago. The sad thing is people tend to support parties more than anything. So whatever said and done very few really change there minds. There are already allegations of that this will be one of the most corrupt elections ever which is a sign that the government is not so sure about themselves. Hopefully the election will be without violence but I highly doubt it.

Presidential Election hotting up

Presidential election is getting closer and with it the increase in campaigns and violence. When a election become tightly contested there usually is an increase in violence. I usually tend to avoid elections simple because I have no interest in the politicians and politics in general , but with so much hype around this one it is hard not to be part of it even if you try. Whether its a funeral , wedding or just a small tea break it is the main point of discussion. You simply can't avoid hearing about it. When your not interested about it you can generally have fun hearing different versions of the same story. In the precious little time I do hang around people I have made the following observations.

• No one is certain who will win the election , Almost everyone can come up with stats and numbers showing there candidate will win
• Real heroes of the war are well and truly forgotten , with due respect to MR's political leadership and SF's military leadership , winning the war wouldn't have being possible without the soldiers who sacrificed there lives in the front line.
• Almost everyone accepts the fact that the government officials are corrupt , while SF wants power to end this corruption he still hasn't answered the corruption allegations made against him. It is generally accepted among both parties that corruption will prevail as long as there are politicians.
• People support parties more than policies , most have already made up there mind who to vote and nothing said and done will change that.
• Almost EVERYONE wants a change and almost EVERYONE knows that it will not happen , and all this allegations will go away as soon as the elections are over.
  

Sweet deal with Bluefur over

My sweet hosting plan with Bluefur has apparently run out. My make money blogging blog was hosted with Bluefur and it was 10$ per year which is less than a dollar per month. It was a Christmas promotion they did and it sure was a sweet deal. Well the promotion period is over and I'm switching back to a normal plan. I missed the mail asking me to renew so my main blog is not accessible now but hopefully it will be up soon :-) .