Refresh Colombo - February 2011

After missing two editions of Refresh Colombo for various reasons I managed to attend the February 2011 edition. I did a presentation about "Outsourcing for Freelancers" and Amisha Amarasinghe did a presentation about using social media beyond a marketing tool. Although it was scheduled to start at 5.15PM it was around 6PM when things got underway.Gihan Fernando of GTS Game Studios was kind enough to sponsor the event and provide the refreshments.
Speaking is not my strong point and this was one of those moments where I wished I finished all my speeches at IFS Toast Masters Club. Most people were interested in Fiverr, which I use heavily to outsource various things. I guess everyone can use some extra cash and if you missed the presentation by any chance you can read my full Fiverr Review. Another thing I noticed is that not many people are aware of search engine optimization or at least that's the feeling I got when watching the crowd. This is an area with lots of potential for most companies and very few are seriously using it to increase there traffic and sales.
After my presentation Amitha did a great presentation about how you can use social media for other purposes other than marketing. I wrote a post about Social Media Marketing in Sri Lanka a while ago, it wasn't a detailed study, just some random thoughts about various social networks with some affiliate links mixed in. Presentation by Amitha was more focused on how you can build your online reputation using social media and why it is important to have an online presence. He also showed some social media sites like LinkedIn that are critical to building your online reputation. Apparently HR managers Google your name before making a hiring decision and you don't want your drunk pictures you posted on Facebook coming as the first result. LinkedIn profiles and Facebook profiles rank easily for your name searches so make sure to have a good professional looking profiles if you are interested in getting a job.
Since there was time left Indu Nanayakkara did a quick presentation about digital radio and how ITN is ready to support that technology etc. At the time of writing this I'm not too happy with ITN because of there allegations against Mahela and Thilan and hopefully they will own up and apologize.
If you are reading this and haven't attended Refresh Colombo you are missing out on a great opportunity. Not only will you learn many interesting things but you will get to interact with many interesting and successful people and that can only be a good thing.

Peiris or Pieris

I hope you can notice the subtle difference of words in the title.While writing an article about the popular television actress Nehara I was in dilemma about her surname. Is it Nehara Pieris or Nehara Peiris. For people who are wondering what difference this would make, this would make a big difference when it comes to search engine ranking. This is somewhat common problem faced by Internet marketers because of English way of spelling and the American way of spelling. Jewelery vs Jewelry is a good example and there are quite a few other examples. Although the spelling of surnames doesn't come into that category it is somewhat a similar problem. What do you think the correct spelling is ?

Affiliate program for selling music and songs in Sri Lanka

Recently I wrote an article about Daddy, Sri Lanka Band. The most obvious way to make money from this article is to sell songs of Daddy within the article. I looked for them in iTunes but couldn't find there songs listed there. Out of curiosity I looked for other Sri Lankan songs and could find only one or two listed in iTunes. This is a great market to explore for Sri Lankan artists and it doesn't take much to register and get listed there as well.

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 :-).