Introduction - HazelHello Gobala Krishnan, My name is Hazel Leong. I'm a trained Electronics Engineer, been a super dedicated engineer with IFX Melaka for the last 4 years. During those 4 years, I've headed the SMT (Surface Mount Technology) Process (Development,Prob Solving, Evaluations, Product transfers, etc), and my main area of expertise is in Problem Solving. That means I have no 'routines', I complete projects back to back, solving each, rolling them out to full scale production, liase with Suppliers, Customers, and I'm spokeperson for my department, you can say, the face of SMT. I conduct and am responsible for most internal & external audits as well. My job scope is big, but that's because I'm good at multitasking, and I've excellent people skill, and, I've always been good at solving problems - I see patterns well. Anyway, my departments success these few years are very well noted by IFX worldwide, so much so that now, IFX global has dsignated that my department (SMT), be the MAIN and only SMT worldwide. This is during the restructuring process, where the IFX will dedicate each process to each site, no more a few processes in each site. So, in IFX melaka, all the other processes were to be transferred out, and only my process to be dedicated here. That shows how good we were. I was there during all this, in fact, I was the one Process Engineer for SMT, and thus was at the forefront of all this. We faught for it, tooth and nail - went all out. I left IFX end of last year, after the training of new engineers began. IFX now has 5 enginners replacing my one position. Why I left IFXWell, getting married was one thing. And my husband has his own offline manufacturing business which requires him to travel A LOT. So, quitting IFX was the right thing to do. Secondly, I believe that with my skills & capability, I can find success in areas outside my trained field. Meaning : I wanna go into business. :) Why The above introduction on something unrelated to IM?The reason is simple - that's to show my character. I'm an extremely fast learner, I'm smart and I'm dedicated when I see that there are benefits in a certain venture. I've NEVER (touch wood) missed a target, a goal, or failed to solve a problem. I've outperformed engineers with years more experience than me, I've won awards after awards (till my boss pulled me out the final year - coz I was gonna win it again, and in all fairness to the other engineers...). And during all that, I still managed to do my MBA at MMU Melaka - and being the top1% in my batch. The reason I'm so good, is that once I decide that I want to do something, I rarely lose sight of it, and with my MBA, it was the same. I am dedicated to USE my MBA skills (not just mere learning and memorizing), and I'm glad to say that I have used quite a bit of my MBA stuffs for my offline businesses with my husband. So, anyway, all these stuffs here is to show you my character. After all, you don't wanna waste the ticket on someone who just wants a free ride, right? :) My backgroundI come from a rather well to do family. My father is CEO of a public listed company, and my brothers have their own law firm, dealing with corporate law, in this country and many others. That's why I have to have a very strong drive to excell, it's always been sibling rivalry here too :) Everything has always been about competition, friendly competition, that is. Ok, I know, you're probably wondering, why on earth would I need the FREE tickets so much right? I can afford it, and I do go to Singapore for other businesses. But that is not the point. I don't want the 'FREE ticket', I want the chance to go with You, Gobala, a REAL, true blue Internet Marketer from Malaysia. And of course, getting to WIN the ticket from you is a real honour, and achievement for me! Anyway, all the above are of my offline endeavors. I'm only a beginner when it comes to Online Marketing, not within your league yet, and I greatly admire the fact that you can achieve so much, thus far. Below would be a testimonial on what I have done these 3-4 months, and its for you to decide if I am worthy of getting the FREE ticket, and having the honour of meeting you in person, learning from you, bouncing ideas back and forth with you. Below would be a chronology of my IM efforts since End December till today (4 months) For last 3 months, I've dedicated about 20% of my waking hours on IM - I know its a lot of words for a relatively small amount of online earning (as compared to you), but I feel that you deserve more than a 1 line reason, in order to win your WIS ticket! So hear me out, and decide if I'm worthy of winning your ticket, & meeting you. Learning Website Design (December)As you know, I'm a trained Electronics Engineer, zero knowledge of internet marketing, or web design for that matter. I could not even design a simple HTML page, had no idea what blogging even meant! And had no idea that adsense / adwords existed :) Yes, that was how little I know about the online world. My interest first sparked when I wanted to create my own website, personal site, and wondered, how would anyone find it... I searched a little, and came to know about SEO. I then bought a 4inch thick Dreamweaver book and spent close to 12 hours learning everything I could. I know, seems like peanuts to most people, but I remember it being really difficult then, I was way behind the curve then. Anyway, after a week of testing out terrible designs, I finally learnt to use templates, and modify from there, picked up CSS too when I realized there *must* be an easier way. After all, engineering is all about creating something better from various proven sources. I'm not a scientists at heart, and I've no patience to prove the re-invention of the wheel. I'm an engineer, and that means I'll much rather grab the wheels and built a cart! Same concept applied to Online Marketing. I want to learn from the better ones, like you for that matter. I created my first website, sinnhoe.com end of Dec/early Jan. And proceeded to try to rank it.
SEO (January)
metal fabrication malaysia - 1/681,000 its pretty good actually coz those were the words I was targeting, I'm tageting Malaysian market, coz for the international market, I hit home with international B2B portals, and they work really great till today :) - and yeap, I created the SinnHoe website :) Basic skills, just grabbed a free template and spiffed it up! Today I've multiple other websites all ranking well for the malaysian business market.
Adsense (Feb 2007)After my tiny success with the SinnHoe.com website, I decided that I wanna monetize on this skill. Thus, I created a test website, proceeded to rank for it inthe same manner I used for the SinnHoe site, and chucked Adsense in for revenue. Results of the website: Adsense Results Mid April 2007:
I know it's not an absolute fortune for my first website, but its been faithfully holding a stable income of $200-$400/month now even though Ive ceased all efforts on it since Febuary 07. Its really, literally on autopilot. I'm especially happy about getting CTR of above 10%! Adsense Results for End April 2007
Above would be the latest snapshot of my Adsense accout. Still averaging CTR of above 10%. Probably the next thing to do is focus on more traffic. But for now, just to point out that this site's earning is VERY stable. Averaging USD7.80/day in pure profit. I do not use Adwords (reselling adverts). Its purely from SEO efforts and good ranking in the engines. Near the end of Feb 2007, I realized that there was now Adwords. Really, I had no blinking idea it even existed before this. And I also realized that with Adsense, there's a lot of hard grunt work, and very little return, and...the results were S-L-O-W to show! *something about the google sandbox..?* Nevertheless, I kept my site active coz, after all, its bringing in very stable $$$ every month, so no reason shootingl the cash cow :)
Own Product (End Feb 2007)End Feb 2007, I decided that I'm going to try Adwords. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what product to promote via Clickbank, so I decided to create my own small product - selling stuffs which I had previously used for my Adsense projects :) I am actually selling softwares etc which I got free! All I do is repackage it into one usable package. Coz with Adsense, I find that I have to find multiple items to get the job done, so now all I did was repackage ALL my tools and stuffs into one tidy package, and sell that via adword - that way, i figured I know more about the product (coz its mine), and the competition would be way less (coz I wont need to get into a bidding war with other affiliates). Own Product Sales: Mid April 2007
Above is a snapshot of my latest paypal account. I use this account for everything I sell/buy. So the $389 isn't a clear representation of my efforts here, its really actually the balance I still have after paying for my monthly reseller hosting, buying ebooks every other week, all that. What I want to point out here is that my tiny product sells constantly - via Adwords. Profit Margin - almost 100% profit. Every $1 brings in $10 - I figured its due to the lack of competition, since there are no 20+ other affiliates jacking up the PPC. Couple of weeks later, I found out that my $$ in paypal cannot be taken out (ironic..), at least not so easily, and it had a waiting period of 6 months! In my books, that's NOT profitable to me. Tying down my finances for 6 months is not what I want to start out with. So I decided to promote clickbank products, where the check is sent every two weeks, which I easily re-route through Singapore. Own Product Sales End April 2007
As can be seen from the latest update of my own small product sales via Adwords, this source of income is still holding very stable. Only problem is that the funds cannot be easily retrieved. One thing to note from both of the above snapshots, the payment where there is a negative, is actually my payment for my hosting, not a refund. So far, I've had ZERO refunds for my product. I understand the costs incured to acquire a single customer is high, thus I prioritize keeping my customers satisfied, and perhaps, make them repeat customers in the future.
Affiliate Marketing (Beginning March)Started off promoting my FIRST affiliate product mid March 2007. Beginning March 2007
**Starting at ground zero...** Mar 8 - Mar 16 I realized my profit margin was so slim, so I proceeded to analyze my ads to make it more profitable for me. Mar 16 - Apr 22 Clearly optimizing adword ads can make the profit margin bigger. I was then at $27/day on average (Profit) |
I started off first with SEO for one of my offline company. Coz it was the least risky way of testing out my SEO skills (for adsense eventually) and I wanted to optimize one of my manufacturing company website. The website Sinnhoe.com. The results 3 months later: 
As can be seen from the snapshot on the left, my first sale was on the first day I started with Affiliate marketing. Maybe its luck, I dunno :) Picking the product is horribly difficult!
This is the snapshot of my Clickbank stats early End Mar 07- Early April 07
With this snapshot, shows my Clickbank sales till Apr 23, 2007.
Recently I've also understood that like all offline business, the most important asset is your contacts. In the online world, that would mean, your lists. I'm no expert at list building, so I had just recently subscribed to GetResponse. 
There!! I finally got the official news that I got those tickets!
...came in and basically reinstated what Estra so missed.