Alexa rank has become one of my obsession beside daily traffic. I don’t care whether Alexa is less important than Google PR or it doesn’t affect the amount of work I receive from advertiser.

The only reason why I obsessed with it is because of the numbers. I like to see improvement and how the numbers goes up and up. The higher, the better. Higher traffic, higher alexa rank, higher income, etc. The only thing that I don’t like to see it getting higher is fuel price and daily things’ price.

Get back to Alexa rank. I have done a trial to increase it. No strategy for international taxes knowledge is needed. Just simple steps of installing Alexa toolbar on my firefox & set my blog as the homepage and put up Alexa widget on my blog. It worked. Previously it was at 3.626.533. On May 10th, the rank has increased to 1.924.930.

It was said that Alexa has changed the calculation system. My Alexa rank stayed at 1.924.930 for the past 2 weeks until yesterday I noticed the increment again. It is at 1.769.104. Not a tremendous increment like last time, but still it’s a good thing for moving from 1.9 million to 1.7 million rank.

My previous attempt to build profitable niche blogs is quite a failure. I still maintain 1 out of 3 blogs but it’s sort of hanging there (read: no direction).

I will start mind mapping all over again. Let’s see, my purpose of creating the niche blog is to share and to earn. In a nut shell, if I want to monetize my blog, I gotta pick a topic that has readers and able to gain traffic. Besides that, the topic should be something that I am passionate about or at least have an interest in it. Else, how do I write and share something that I have no idea at all?

Now, instead of sorting out my interest, I will start from the topic that can make $money$ but too bad I have no interest/no knowledge/no idea about:

1. Foods
I don’t cook. I ever thought of translating my mum’s recipes but the ingredients names are too complicated. Review on the eating places is impossible too because I seldom go out eat and the price has raise nowadays.

2. Blogging and making money
I don’t earn more than $1000 per month and I have no 1k unique visitors per day. Full stop.

3. Technology & gadget
Ask me what is the latest model from Nokia, I don’t know. I know how to use computer, that’s all.

4. Photography
I have no mumbo jumbo DSLR. I snap pictures with my old Canon Digicam in auto mode. What with shutter speed, wide lens, etc?

5. Home & gardening
My house has no garden but a small plant pot. I don’t do what so ever fabulous decoration to my house. I don’t spend time googling about interior and furniture although I adore IKEA products.

6. Traveling
I love travel~! But my financial isn’t good enough to support me traveling. Going to KL once in a few months time ain’t a travel for me. It’s the same old destination.

7. Fashion and beauty
I love make up and dress up. Too bad, no $$$ to indulge myself more. I have very little knowledge about it too. Not the right person to talk about maternity clothes.

Flowers at Arya Duta Hotel.

Next, what I like to do that could be the profitable niche topic:

1. I like watching Asian drama (especially Taiwan and Singapore) since few years ago. I will googling about the drama info, the actors and actresses, the lyrics, everything related to the drama.

2. I’m a freelance designer. I research about design stuff, the vector pack, the brush, the tutorial, and so on.

3. I watch E! entertainment channel a lot. It has fashion do and don’t, celebrity news, reality show, true hollywood story. A lot to dig from here.

4. I like digging about relationship issue. Break up, problem with the ex, brownies relationship (read: younger boyfriend), friendship issue, etc. Been there, done that, have an interest in it.

Well, I have the image in my mind already. I’ll continue with the niche blogs once I finish with my blog design. The 4 hours black out has deduct my working hours. -__-”

“What is your job?” – this is the almighty question that people always throws to me. The freelance designer answer won’t satisfy them. If I tell them I earn money through blogging, they will just laugh. Either they think it is mission impossible (I am crazy) or it has no future (I am stupid). Excuse me, I’m a smart woman and I won’t do something that has no benefit for me. I will jump into futures broker if it does has a wow-ing benefit.

These people are weird. When I told them I was working in a company as a designer with such a low salary, they didn’t mind. But when I told them I work at home as a freelance designer, they seems to be mind. As if freelance is not a real work or not for long term. Which bring me to the thought, is it the job title that matters?

Hey, a job title is just a name that determines somebody’s position in the company. Someone, whose job is offering illegal unsecured loans at high interest rates to individuals, is called a loan shark a.k.a Ah Long. In a better words, loan shark can also be called as Finance Manager. (refer to the dialogs in Like Father Like Daughter – Singapore drama). But the job scope is just the same.

Ah whatever la. I’m happy with my WAH (Work At Home) status.

3 years ago, 2005, I bought my Acer travelmate laptop at Sunway Pyramid, without any accessories; i.e. mouse, laptop bag, laptop cooler, flash disk, etc. Not long after that, PC Fair came with so many promotions and cheaper price of course. -__-”

3 years later which is 3 weeks ago, I bought Dell PC (inspiron 530) from one of the Dell dealer in Medan. It came in a complete set; keyboard, mouse, mouse pad, and speaker. Then, here come NIX’08 – National IT Expo 2008, from 6 – 11 May, at Sun Plaza. -__-”

Why the PC Fair always comes after I bought the computer? Better don’t go and check the price, else I might faint down if it is cheaper than what I paid. Or maybe there is free gifts for buying computer; i.e. printers or flash disk or free RAM.

The hotels business in Medan seems to be very good. There is always new hotels coming up, be it the small or the big one. While the old hotels will re-paint their buildings and improve their service, so they won’t lose to the new comer. Most of the hotels aim the business people, whether they come from outstation or overseas.

All the while Grand Angkasa Hotel is the one and only 5 stars hotel in Medan. Not until last year when The Aryaduta Hotel and JW Marriott came to this town.

JW Marriott. Nov 2007. Taken from Pisa Cafe, 2nd floor of Capital Building.

JW Marriott. April 2008.

Well, I used have the dream to own and manage a hotel. Perhaps it was an influence from Hotelier (Korean drama). Not interested in DeWalt tools but managing the place seems to be pretty interesting.