PayPal lifts ban on Malaysia

It's good news for online entrepreneurs in Malaysia. PayPal has lifted its ban on Malaysia and has allowed withdrawals from PayPal accounts through local banks' debit cards that are associated with Visa or MasterCard.

Since several years ago when there was a massive spate of credit card fraud linked to Malaysians, PayPal had disallowed withdrawals in Malaysia. So, for many years online entrepreneurs in Malaysia had a common problem of not being able to withdraw money directly from PayPal.

Many did it in indirect and roundabout ways, such as opening bank accounts in neighbouring Singapore, creating US investment checking bank accounts for their debit cards, or using online banks' virtual money debit cards recognised by PayPal.

Malaysians could do most of the transactions in PayPal except withdrawal because there was no provision that can direct money to local banks. So, the solution was third party debit cards.

However, now Malaysians can get local banks' debit cards associated with MasterCard or Visa, like NexG debit card issued by AmBank, which can be bought from Seven Eleven stores costing RM25 each.

So, it is excellent news for Internet marketers in Malaysia. Check up Matt Ng of http://InternetMoneyBlog.com who has written about this in detail.

World's biggest swimsuit shoot

Let's take a look at something light-hearted for a change. Let's look at Bondi Beach located on the east coast of Australia and in the suburb of Sydney.

Bondi Beach is one of Australia's most famous beaches and among the world's most well-known beaches. It is about 1 km long and is patrolled by vigilant lifesavers.

There are lots of great coffee-shops and eateries along the beach and tucked away in the back streets. You can also find many places to stay.

There are activities all year round at Bondi Beach, many of them centred around the Pavilion. They range from surfing competitions and kite flying to festivals, markets and galleries. In the video below you can see one of the great swimsuit events there.

Find online marketing services here

At DiscountClick you can find a whole range of internet marketing services for all types of online businesses. Examples of services offered are marketing expertise for websites to sell their products and services online, search engines promotion, management of email promotion lists and many other online marketing services that you can think of.

Basically, the services offered can be broadly classified into three, i.e. Search Engine Marketing, SEO Services Marketing and Top Search Engine Promotion.

Under Search Engine Marketing, you get services like SEO Consulting, Link Building Services and Affordable Content Writing amongst others.

Under SEO Services Marketing you can get Keyword Ranking Reports to find out where your website presently stands in the search engines. You also get Professional SEO Tools including Keyword Density Analyzer, and Organic and Pay Per Click Reporting.

Under Top Search Engine Promotion, you will get service to be in Top Rankings on all major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Altavista and others.

So when you're in need of Online Marketing Services it will pay you to spare a thought for DiscountClick.com.

Advertisers keen for publicity at Blogsvertise

I have just joined another wonderful sponsored posts blogs advertising site called Blogsvertise. The advertisers there are keen to have bloggers blog about their websites, products and services and create a buzz in the blogosphere because they need the publicity for more business.

In return Blogsvertise pays the blogger using PayPal on a per blog entry basis for the mention and buzz that the blogger creates in the blog entry for the advertiser.

My good old friend Mark who introduced Blogsvertise to me says that the site seems to be paying reasonable payments for the blog entries and the entries need not be unduly long.

Members will be assigned tasks through the email. They will be given website URLs and guidelines on what to write about. They can review the site by praising it, or even complain about it, or somehow relate it to their daily life. However, one general requirement is that there should be at least three links in the post pointing to the advertiser's website.

Payments are automatically made to the blogger's PayPal account after his entry is approved and the payment period has elapsed.

Great deal on one product each day

Many of us bloggers are Internet marketers too. We use online business related tools a lot of the time. As such, we should be interested in this new site called DealDotCom. It's a brand new idea on the Internet.

From this site, you can get good deals for Internet marketing related products, sometimes even at half price. This site is unique in that prices are cheap but only one product is offered for one day only. It is a special discount deal on one product each day.

You can check it out by clicking this link which will take you to today's offer:
www.tinyurl.com/2ogbho

This system is full of surprises because you won't know what products are coming beforehand, how many copies have been sold or when the product will sell out during the day.

On Sept. 20 the product was the WordPress plug-in WP Affiliate Pro which normally sells at $97 (you can check the homepage of the plug-in to verify) and it was selling for $49.88 at DealDotCom.

It also sells not so expensive things like relevant ebooks such as Product Domination Blueprint plus Master Resale Rights for $7.66 on Sept. 22.

With such a site that offers one product for only one day, at a good price, you can expect people to log in everyday to check what's being sold and at what price. It will become a daily watchlist for people who don't want to miss out on a great deal.

Moreover, if you have your own product such as an ebook for instance, you can submit it to DealDotCom for them to put it up for sale at special discount on one of the days.

Also, DealDotCom has an affiliate program which pays good commission for two tiers. If you want, you can click this link to join:
www.tinyurl.com/263a45

Plan your vacation online

Are you cooped up in your home office working so hard blogging or building an online business? It can be very taxing. So, why not seek out a couple of buddies and plan a vacation to cool down.

To plan a holiday is quite simple if you use Hotel Reservations. Here you can easily book your hotel accommodation and flights online. You can even book online a rental car for your city of vacation.

If you don’t want hotel accommodation, you can opt for vacation rentals, which are basically any suite-type lodging that has self-catering facilities, like wet bar, refrigerator, microwave oven, etc. Most have separate bedrooms, fully equipped kitchens, bathrooms, washer and dryer, and sometimes a balcony or patio.

Unlike hotels with per person pricing, there is a set price for an entire vacation rental with a maximum number of persons allowed.

With the www.HotelReservations.com website, you can even plan and book an entire vacation package, with interesting activities thrown in. For example, if you plan to come to Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaysia where I live, you can plan the flights, the hotels and even the local activities in and around Kuala Lumpur, or KL as it is popularly known.

Activities offered may include walks in the rain forests or seeing communities of sparkling fireflies in riverside villages at night.

Yes, come to think about it, you should come to KL since there will be plenty of interesting local activities as this is the Visit Malaysia Year. And don’t forget the sumptuous local food and delicacies which will titillate your taste buds.

Same procedure applies if you plan to vacation in London, Honolulu, or Florida, for example. The HotelReservations.com covers the USA, South America, Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia and most other parts of the world. You can use your credit card and the prices go with the lowest Internet rate price guarantee. So, be smart and plan to book your vacation to get out of your home office for a while to relax. It’ll do you a world of good.

Complement Microsoft Office with Google Apps

Everyone has been talking about Google’s latest software package, Google Apps, and whether it is competition to Microsoft Office.

David Utter, a WebProNews editor, writes in an article that whether you use Microsoft Office or not, Google apparently urges you to complement that desktop productivity suite with Google Aps which are web-based.

Large numbers of entry level staffers may switch to Google Aps because they need only basic functionality. Why support patches and updates for Office when Google will do all that work for you since the software is web hosted.

Google Aps offers the following: word processing, spreadsheets, email, calendar, IM/voice client, web page creation, all available from a centrally managed start page. All you need is the PC with Internet connection and a headset for Google Talk.

If the workers publish their documents through Google Docs & Spreadsheets, the documents can be managed from one place.

It is an alternative to installed, licensed desktop software. It is delivered over the Internet and do not require companies to install or maintain software locally.

However, there is an issue of the server or network going down while people are trying to work with Google Aps. Nevertheless, the question is, is the chance of a network or Google outage any greater than that of a PC problem?

In these times, all that a company needs is an Internet connection, and some time to sign up for and enable Google Aps. David Utter says this is an option firms should at least consider before writing that check for Office licences.

WebProNews talked with Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg to get his opinion on the issue. Find out what he had to say, here on WebProNews video.

Coupons handy for holiday season

The holiday season is fast approaching with Halloween and Thanksgiving preceding the busy Christmas time of more gifts. At such times you should not forget the site at www.CouponChief.com dealing with money-saving coupons.

This site is a subsidiary of Coupon Chief, Inc. where they always provide you a one-stop coupon deal and discount resource. This of course is great when you are buying gifts for your loved ones and friends.

At this site, you can get up-to-date coupon codes and promotional deals and discounts which are one of the best in online shopping.

They are always giving the latest deals and offers from their extensive list of online shopping merchants dealing with offers like Dell coupons, Amazon coupon codes, Travelocity deals, etc. Not only that, they are constantly adding more merchants to their list together with new coupon codes, promotion codes, and offers.

It will certainly take care of your wallet and improve your online shopping experience if you constantly visit them again and again whenever you want to buy online.

Firefox gets 400 million downloads

Although microsoft still leads the web browser market with 63.9 percent share but Firefox is slowly and steadily gaining ground with about 20 percent.

Mozilla has announced that its open source free browser has attained 400 million downloads. This is a big feather in the cap for Firefox, which launched only three years ago in 2004.

Since then there were impressive successes. One year after its launch in 2005, Firefox achieved 100 million downloads and in 2006 it hit the 200 million mark. And the latest figure is the 400 million mark.

In message posted on its website Spread Firefox, the company thanks its users. "Today, you all have done it once again. With your amazing efforts, Firefox has reached 400 million downloads and demonstrated that not even the world's most powerful companies can keep people from a better, safer, and faster Web experience."

"You all, the grass roots and the heart of the Firefox movement, have helped hundreds of millions of people find that better, safer, and faster Web."

"Thank you for building this movement. Thank you for helping Firefox to deliver on the great promises of the Web. On behalf of the hundreds of millions of Firefox users, thank you for all that you have done in just three short years."

I used to utilize Internet Explorer 7 and totally ignored Firefox. But at the insistence of my good old pal Mark, I downloaded Mozilla Firefox to try. Much to my pleasant surprise, I found that this incredible browser is very, very fast and easy to use with so many choices of add-ons and plugins.

Now I'm totally hooked on it and look forward to a more delightful web surfing experience. That must have been the wonderful experience of the 400 million Firefox users too.

Google Dance about to start!

Each change in display of PageRank or PR causes a stir among the SEO community and webmasters trying to get their sites to the top of the Google Rankings, not forgetting the bloggers who need high PR to command high income in writing paid posts.

From 2000 to 2003, the PR index updates tended to happen regularly about once a month. The resulting changes with now-you-see-it-now-you-don't green bar were called the Google Dance.

From 2003 Google started using an index that is updated everyday. So instead of a monthly event, small day-to-day changes, termed everflux occurs. However, this is not displayed or refreshed on the toolbar.

Lately, updated PRs are usually made visible only every 3 - 4 months. The Google Dance occurs over the course of about a week and is much overdue now.

As of Sept 10, 2007 there has not been a PR review for 133 days - the longest wait ever. Prior to this, the longest time between PR reviews was 122 days (Oct 19, 2005 to Feb 18, 2006).

As such, considering this, the Google Dance should be happening anytime now. So, keep an eye on your Google toolbar and watch your PR dance.

Greg gives out his secrets

President and Co-Founder of SEO-PR.com, Greg Jarboe spoke to WebProNews after a session on Blogging and RSS at SES San Jose 2007. Jarboe talks about the difficulties on the web today with the amount of bloggers, 98 million to be exact. Tactics to use while promoting include narrowing down the few influencers in your topic area and creating a relationship with them, using old technology such as the telephone or e-mail. He also gives tips like how to add value to posts and using other websites like Buzzlogic.com to enhance your optimization.