Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

It’s being two full months since I have worked in this new company, left with only one more month before I know if I will be confirmed or not.

Working in a MNC level company is yet, especially when it is small and everybody in the company are taking multiple roles, projects etc. There’s no exception for me despite me being new, since I am hired to do exactly what i know best, that is to help push the company website to page one.

But there are many obstacles that are required to clean up, especially when it means clearing up and simplifying the previously complicated working procedures from previous web-designers, programers and those that had already left the company just so to make themselves look good.

It was only just a few days back that I finally learn what i am hired for, as the interview while is a breeze, but the probation period helped to-date help me better understand why big companies wants to have their own in-house employees knowing what’s going on, so they can take immediate action and react quickly.

But on the other side, I found that there are more to it than it meets the eye. As it is impossible to 100 percent implement the full changes that I need need to limited resources, lack of mutual understanding due to differences in knowledge and position.

Having to do search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), social media optimization (SMO), display advertising, press-release articles marketing, electronic brochure ad copy design, fixing website errors, video advertising, that’s a lot of work, but it’s fun and educational at the same time, having to learn to juggle between the multiple roles and focus on the higher priority tasks first.

While I’m trying to help the company cut cost, yet company is pushing for sales, growing revenue, coming up with text copies for upcoming ads, scheduling, and pre-plan ad copies with text and theme before handing over to the web-designers to draft the ad copies.

To top things off, I only learn the full extent of my area of responsibility when I had the xml sitemap crawled the full website and uploaded it to Google. The results that came back surprised me, that I was handling a website that has over 3,800+ dynamic web pages that only complicates things further.

Working in a MNC company is challenging, as it really stretches one’s ability, and helps put on a thinking cap. Coming up with alternative solutions whenever the while hat standard business practice of website optimization for search engines are not applicable in the short-mid term at least, and coming up with other ideas to bend it towards making it search engine friendly legally using white hat strategies while complying with Google search engine rules.

The one thing that helps consultants get a really clear idea of what is lacking in a current live website will be Google Webmaster Tools, where they provide us with reports of the web pages crawling error, missing pages, and many other features that is required to better optimize the page for more online visibility.

Not only does it tells us the errors that we have, it only provides the link of back-links, even expired back-links that may be linking to missing pages, the traffic sources, and the global heat map of the concentration of audience that are visiting the website, providing business owners a clearer picture of where to focus their attention on, the buyer’s market and not markets that they think they want to go in yet there’s no demand.

The features in which are really helpful, and the best part is, it is completely free, saving businesses hundreds and even thousands of dollars if the person knows how to read and use the data given by Google correctly.

Back to subject proper, regarding the difficulties, initially, I thought I only need to report to my direct superior, it’s after this period that i realize other wise. In fact it is completely different, having learn from my direct superior that reporting is redundant,  what he and the business needs is reports of changes and any improvements in ranking.

Being the first person to lead and implement changes to turn a unfriendly website and make it search engine friendly is a uphill task and that give me lots of room to play with proper guidance and consultation with frequent advices and feedback from another colleague who’s also considered my superior due to her experience in every single department of the company.

It is much more difficult to implement changes when the system is already built on a search engine unfriendly platform, and having a whole team of support that doesn’t supports nor know optimization thus making it much more difficult. Nevertheless, it is a challenging task that allows me to learn and better appreciate what my mentor has taught me, and cherish what Google has done, to make their advertising platform as easy as possible so that anybody can advertise on Google on their own without any support staff for fear that staffs may screw up their advertising campaign, thus it is a smart move of Google to let clients advertise on their own.

Other search engine competitors wants to increase their competitive advantage, yet it is this very strategy of helping clients optimize their campaigns that is turning off clients, for what i realized is that they are already providing low quality traffic, now they still want to provide poorly trained support staffs to handle the campaigns, that’s really a huge joke, something that businesses wants to do.

That is something that is still lacking in the competitors that Google is fighting against. I know this because I was actually told to maximize the reach and awareness of the company branding and services, thus i had to keep on asking, just so that i can show that I am doing what is expected of me.

Here’s the ironic part, and i still cannot get this answer, why would i want to burn more of companies’ funds on search engines that are not providing quality traffic like Google, since Google is having over 85% of the traffic where search engine is concerned, so it doesn’t really make any sense for me to visit competitors who I already sensed from the contact page when I test their customer support staff’s knowledge, they don’t know what they are doing, yet wanting to optimize the campaign, sensing that they might work against my companies’ interest, i just continue to probe more. Now still in progress until I know how the lines are being drawn.

This employment that I have currently is great, as it gives me a chance to learn how to manage people, something that only department heads have to do. On one-hand, i have to report to superiors, on the other hand, i have to manage the graphics designer, and website coding staff (designer) and getting sure that my work doesn’t gets delayed. It definitely a great learning experience where business is concerned, like piecing up a large thousand pieces puzzle together, that will require lots of patience and hard-work.

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Contract is what many would consider to be a love and hate affair. As it is most people would consider to be a chain that ties them to the company and be employed for the term stated on the paper else risk compensating the company and return whatever bonus he/she was offered at the start.

There are a couple of ways whereby we can use it to our advantage.

There are generally three types of contracts, positive, neutral and negative. I was fortunate enough to bump into at least two out of the three types that I just mentioned.

The worse contract ever is verbal contract with no black and white agreement, and you just have to bet on it based on blind faith, hoping it will not fail you before the terms are being met, and the worse thing that can happen is that the contract is void, and the only thing that you can take away is to learn how to selectively trust individuals and even pick up tell-tale signs to determine if the person is trustworthy or not.

The moment you realized that the verbal agreement has being defaulted, thoughts will start flying, majority negative, at it is at this critical time, that memories of the very terms mentioned by sweet talking, that replays like a movie rewinding in your mind, and you learn instantly and have it craved in your mind not to simply trust anybody.

The neutral agreement is one that does not harm you yet it does not help you in anyway possible, it only states that what are your basic rights, entitlement under the employment regulation and guidelines. If you want more benefits, you’ll have to earn it. That’s why most companies have either this one if not the negative to use against gullible rookies who are new to the working society.

Such of a kind is to prevent any extra liability from surfacing, protecting company’s interest as well as clearly stating how much maximal can the employee claim from the company so they know they cannot mess with them. That generally is the idea on how companies put a leash on every single employees if they have to sign on the papers, but only when the leashed individual try to step outside of the allowed area, than get choked and warned based on the legal terms stated under the eyes of the law, so they than learn how’s the boss.

The best type of agreements are those which Google may still are providing, and that is to headhunt for the next potential competitor, and acquire them even before they started, so instead of facing new threats and competitors, they are in fact creating more alliances to solidify their stronghold, build on their fortresses to deter any incoming, up and rising competitor from even getting near them.

I once read that Google’s employment contract for those whom they specially headhunted allows they to take time off to do their own business if they have any, and are able to use the company’s resources, with free food, funds, resources, paid to fail (funds for their to start business ventures) and create the next big thing. Such is a example of positive contract, but this type of contract goes out to only the smartest and the brightest will get it.

Nonetheless, contract is important, be sure to identify and determine if the contract is working with you or against you, should you have any questions, always ask and clarify first before signing on the dot, if you ask after you sign, you might have to pay compensation fees for failure to abide by the terms stated.

The best tip to landing yourself a neutral if not positive agreement that have your interests at heart is to follow and do what you like, there will be someone, some entity that will be willing to take you in, while allowing you to continue doing what you love most in a controlled environment to reduce and prevent any possibility of liability incurring.

If you want to have it in your advantage, be sure to follow my tip and do what you love, as you will in time find a employer who is willing to let you fail (try everything inclusive of banging the wall) so that they will win. Fail in a manner that helps them eliminate bad practices and concentrate on best industry practice, thus you and the business both gain.

It can be a win-win situation if you learn how to correct use it. To win or to lose, it is all up to you. Selecting the best contract is what puts you in safe hands.

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To determine and analyze if a new business can succeed or fail depends on the entry levels of the entity which it enters and exits respectively.

Majority of the businesses start small and expand accordingly based on their profitability. Only a couple of large scale business entities are able to start a new company on a large scale with a huge financial budgets.

Most aspiring entrepreneurs often fail even before they could even get a foot-hold and have the business steady and running.

There are a couple of entry levels that clearly demonstrates if the business will succeed or fail based on the entry in the short term perspective if the business owner doesn’t change strategy.

I hope this entry helps individuals in determine the level of start ups they are able to start, and come up with the necessary strategies required to take the business to the next higher level.

Size of financial ability determines probability of success, and most successful enterprises often acquire other businesses to get a head-start.

Level One

It is what many new business owners start and fail in, the term used is a start up. Before the business can even start operation (like a plane unable to start) the business face a couple of difficult problems in preventing the entity from even moving forward. Critical problem such as financial is the main concern restricting the even the growth.

This is often a one-man-show (OMS) business where the owner does anything and everything, left on their own to prove their worth.

Level Two

Start up business owner has minimal capital and him/herself to ensure the business is even able to continue operation into the first year period. Having to pay for products, services delivery fees, rental and their personal expenses. Funds are depleted much faster than predicted and the business close its shutters permanently having to repay their loans with installments, keeping them away from re-entering the business arena.

Also considered a one-man-show operation, but at times, they may only be able to hire another part time assistant to help out with the business. Future is not guaranteed.

Level Three

Business has no issues with funding, able to meet estimated business expenses for at least three to five years of operations. The only issue is the inability to hire talents, and grow the business, reasons could be due to poor employment guidelines, no proper appraisal, employees feel unhappy and dejected in the employee in particular with the superiors inclusive of a destructive boss limiting the employees to release their potential and talents to their fullest.

This is what many employees may use as a learning platform to gain the experience they need to run a new company before going to a better company to help grow the business.

As for the business owner, he/she will take the experience as a tuition fee and gain experience to recoup more funds for another shot in the business.

Level Four

Entity has got no issues with both manpower and financial funding from investors, but the both the head and in-charge pays well, lets temporary succeed clouds their vision and take matters into their own hands refusing to listen to advices from the very talents they recruited and soon find business sliding down gradually until it is at risk of elimination from competitors who are hot on their heels.

An example of such a business will be the Blackberry who are facing intense and much stronger competitors such as andriod – HTC and iphone – Apple. Talents all flock to bigger enterprises,  leaving the business in lurch, as Blackberry mobile apps have stopped development and is only on a demand supported basis, unlike bigger competitors who still have developers willing to create apps to create and spur new demand for the mobile phones with larger market shares.

Level Five

Enterprise has generally no problems dealing with both financial and manpower issues, but what’s left are those surround business expansion both locally and globally, low connections of important networks and help from experts in different fields to aid the growth of the enterprise to a higher level.

An example is how many overseas companies wanting to have a slice in the China market, Linkedin, Google having much difficulty penetrating market due to lack of local connections and poor support from the locals.

Level Six

The enterprise has got no problems nor difficulty in all aspects, pulling resources, funds, networks, and creditability based on excellent remuneration where talents are given room for flex their muscles and funds to even fail in order to come up with the next big thing both from internal and external sources by buying over potential businesses limited by funding issues.

Bill Gates is the only business for Microsoft to date that has no problems doing business in both Eastern and Western nations.

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In any business, you often see big companies have many departments, especially two departments that seems to share the same job scope when sales is concerned.

They are the Sales and Marketing department followed by the Advertising and Promotion department.

Big companies have both of these departments whereas small businesses only focus on advertising and promotions, this is the primarily reason why most small businesses never ever grow bigger, because they are not copying the best practices in business organizations.

Sales and marketing is actually more like a branding campaign. One that sells a brand, promoting the value, encouraging the loyalty and offering unforgettable customer service experience in giving customers as well as business partners more reasons why they would want to come back to buy from a company that focus on sales and marketing.

Advertising and promotions on the other hand is a quick temporary method to boost sales, generate traffic and create publicity to get people talking about the brand. The focus here is to generate more interest in either a newly launched product or service to clients and giving them more reasons to visit the new business over existing businesses who may not be offering such offers and rebates to attract new leads with hopes of converting them into a customer and try to convert them into long term loyal returning customers with the help of sales and marketing department.

In traditional businesses, only companies with big and deep pockets that goes into millions are able to have both departments in their business to grow the business, this is where the newly start-ups and small medium businesses are unable to compete due to lack of financial ability where they are up against the big boys.

But with search engine marketing, the use of of paid and free search engine listings offers all businesses regardless, big, small, medium or even new/yet to be established businesses an equal opportunity to achieve the same results on the internet using search engine marketing strategies.

Using Google helps business succeed faster than smaller search engines, due to the difference in market share, the amount of exposure it gives to the business both locally and globally at the same time without over spending. At the same time collect specific data and information from clients that traditional offline businesses may even have difficulty collecting feed-backs from their clients.

Search engine marketing results page are actually divided into two categories, which are known only to internet marketers, business owners who are paying money to advertise online, that is unknown to the general public.

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is actually what we considered to be of a advertising and promotion campaign, while Search engine optimization (SEO) is considered to be a branding campaign.

PPC is a campaign that gives immediate results that as business owners, investors and retails can easily measure and determine if the returns on investment is worthy and should they continue to advertise on search engines, results given helps businesses determine where their markets are, age group, demographics, race, age group, what kind of browser, user/client search behavior etc.

It gives business a detail report of what exactly are clients searching, and as professional PPC consultants, service providers, it is up to the consultants to provide quality, valuable information to help businesses refine their ads and improve on the conversion so as to help businesses target the right clients. But there are so many self-proclaimed experts online i still are able to see and point out their mistakes with a simple search and look at their paid ad on search engines if they are implementing the correct strategies or not.

SEO on the other hand is a sales and marketing campaign. One that helps business build creditability, value over time in the form of an intangible asset as known in accountants when it comes to balance sheet reporting. It is meant to provider viewers, searchers relevant information related to their immediate words that they are searching for. Google has done an excellent job in refining their algorithm over the past few years, giving us marketers a much more easier life at providing quality content without having to fight for positions in the search engines against those marketers using black hat seo strategies.

Since it is a marketing, branding campaign, it should be, and rightfully be more expensive than the cost of engaging a PPC consultant or service provider, but the irony is that, I see local companies doing the reverse. PPC services are much more expensive than SEO services, such a business landscape and pricing reflects the low level of professional understanding of what search engine marketing is actually about.

Neither do the businesses providing such services care about these things, a point that I observe over the past few years. They just take the clients money, show results, but did not provide suggestions on how they can better improve and help clients earn more money by identifying untapped markets, a skill that as professional consultant or service provider should do, yet there is very little search engine marketers doing what is actually recommended, in fact it is considered a best practice, that many business providers are not offering at this moment.

Should any businesses plan to scale their business locally and globally, they should consider hiring only professionals, and test them in terms of their knowledge, and not based on their clients profile, as clients, they don’t know what they are getting is good or bad.

So the next time if you need help determining if you or your business is in safe hands of a professional, just refer back to this blog entry and test them. You will be surprised that they might not even know these facts. This information is what I took over the years to compare the difference between traditional and online business models, before coming to such a conclusion.

I hope this piece of information helps you in one way or another.

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is a skill that majority of the marketers would find it extremely hard to understand due to the difficult algorithm settings of Google formula where nobody knows exactly the full formulas.

It is a skill that can effective, and be efficient for businesses to grow their web presence without allocating a heavy budget on advertising since seo is a skill, it is a strategy, that is considered trade secret by best business practices, the lesser the people who knows about it, the better it is for the professionals.

It helped me to understand the real basics and importance of running a business. Following the continuous change and improvements of their formula, it is actually better for those individual who learned from the professionals. All that I can say about seo is that, if you apply ethical, honest traditional business skills to online, in terms of website keyword optimization, linking, content publishing,  you should be able to get ranked and being found on Google.

The changes of Google was good, as a matter of fact, it helps weed out poor optimized website results and providing more relevant results pertaining to giving the users of search engines what they want, and not what marketers like grey or black hat seo marketers are trying to do in outsmarting the Google to cash in on any lapse of their formula.

Over the past few years, having played and applied only a single basic seo strategy like only using internal link building to tests what i have learn and made confirmation and prove that it works. It has come to my conclusion that whatever I learn from really works, at least for the past few years, and my mentor has being giving frequent updates that benefits us his students of course.

Learning this skill can indeed make a lot of difference and save lots of advertising expenses if done properly spreading awareness to both local and global markets. Having Pay-Per-Click skill actually doubles the effect of higher conversion, low cost marketing while growing for business clients who engage in our services, it is way much cheaper to pay for qualified leads who are searching for the specified keyword of products and services as compared to traditional advertising of paying for maximal viewership ignoring if they are even interested in the products and services, which are considered waste of time, money and resources into creating of advertisement.

There are so many ppc ads that I have observed in that are poorly optimized, ads showing up for words that they did not optimize for, resulting in higher impressions, lower click through rates due to unrelated keyword optimization by under trained ppc consultants from many companies both locally and globally.

I will take more time and put in more effort to improve and apply seo strategies from now onwards so as to maintain my spot on page one for my own keyword that will help me close more deals in future.

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Following the recent Google Panda updates, my own blog that was found on page one for my name itself has being changing positions for the past few weeks.

From the release and execution of the updates of Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO), in the past, i only need to maintain a few blog post on a per month basis to remain competitive and have my blog search engine results page to be found on page one for google.com.

After the chance, which I need a testing, finding out that it dropped to page two, second spot for couple of days without new content..

Just last week, I managed to climb back up to page one, not the last position of tenth, but on the eighth spot, now after a few days, i’m back on page two for serps.

The chance following google panda update for the google spider crawling rate has being proven that they increase their crawling rate by over fifty percent.

Exact details on how fast they crawl and update, it will be a secret that I myself know. At least now I know how fast and soon i need to give new content to maintain my page one results.

More chances will be tested, as i play around testing the blog entries to test how the updates affects my blog so I have a better idea of how they search engine rates new content.

For more information on specific panda update refer to Tips To Break From Google

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Time is a measurement system of a unit. It is a measurement of a period or interval.

Everyone has the same amount of time twenty four hours a day seven days a week fifty two weeks a year and so on. Time is so unique that nobody can create extra time for anybody.

The poor can only have maximal twenty four hours per day, while the wealthy and successful businessmen have X numbers of twenty four hours, and it is based on the number of business partners, employees they have working on a project, repeating doing the same thing to produce products, services for sales and profit to the business.

With increase help and paying people in-exchange for their time, the businessmen thus can increase and better utilize his time on more profitable business to further increase his wealth accumulation process.

Businessmen thus in a way is buying time from people, leverage on business partners and employees which is mutually beneficial to all the parties involved with agreements to the terms and conditions attached.

While time can actually be bought, but nobody can buy back lost time, time which has passed can never ever be bought, which brings me to opportunity cost, when the timing is right, a business proposal is in front of you wanting to invest and be part of it, if you miss it that time, in future when they succeed, you cannot turn back time thus you live a life with regrets and nothing else.

We can buy time but we cannot buy lost time since we cannot turn back the clock. Instead of living with regrets, why not make the best use of time to do what we like, go after our dreams, passion or wealth.

If you are clueless about opportunity cost, there is a daily repeating event in the neighbourhood near you. Just start queuing up for free newspapers everyday, at time you may be in the front, but what happens if you are at the back of the queue without any free newspapers left. That is the lost of opportunity. You can choose to wake up early, take action by queuing or find shortcuts.

If you lose it, you cannot find it back, since the newspapers are all given out with no spare copies. It is identical to doing business. Just with the exception of business where money comes into the picture.

If you know Microsoft, Google and Facebook could be what it is today, if there is a opportunity for you to invest when they are still unknown, you have found the perfect opportunity that once lost, it is lost forever for good or bad depending on your perspective, time is important, so make sure you know how to look ahead and invest in visions, not dreams.

Today at this date, I have an opportunity for interested parties, I’m not sure how long or short this limited opportunity to work with successful businessmen will last, but if you understand the value of time, do not hesitate to contact me,

I’ll get back to you if you show interest in wealth accumulation, moreover whatever I am doing right now, it is tested, proven with time and results from seniors who have being there, done that. I’m learning from businessmen who plans on building companies, if you want to be part of it, why not now, ask me for more details.

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Tension is a strained relationship between both parties between individuals, groups or nations. It is the disagreements which both parties fail to come up with a mutually beneficial terms causing the relationship to be stretched and the bonding goes from thick to thin with each escalating issues surfacing.

It creates emotional strain, intense anxiety among everyone among those affected by the disagreements.

Tensions are everywhere, from average person walking on the streets to businesses, and even nations. All the way from the smallest average people like you and I to the biggest most powerful nations, all of us are living in a tensed up society these days with lots hidden unhappiness stored inside each nation waiting for eruption like a volcano. Each new failed or sour business relationship between two countries is like the sill of the volcano, the unhappiness among both countries is like the large magma chamber.

When a failed sour business caused relationships to take a slight turn for the worse, causing job losses in businesses affecting large scale especially among different countries, a parasitic cone is formed with lava flowing out from the parasitic cone slowly increasing the damage as it waits for the magma chamber to erupt with time.

There are so many examples to look at among different nations.

First up most frequently appeared in news media is China US bilateral ties issue which goes a long way, and is made worse with white house support Google from getting bullied by Baidu who is protecting the China identity at home and online.

Next up is US versus Iran, the quest to sweep the root of the terrorist clean and flush them out but it still has a long way to go. USA once missed the chance to plug out Osama Bin Laden as reported in one of the news reports last time, wanting to silence the ring leader, father of the terrorist who was personally trained by the US themselves.

Up next will be Thailand politics chaos situation, with the red shirt versus the yellow shirt. Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra who made billions upon using his politics influence to increase his wealth, avoided paying tax and accused by current prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva who is constantly digging for new evidence to upset and reduce his influence in Thailand wanting to silence the opposition the red shirt but has yet to see any improvement, in fact he made the Thailand economy worse following the recent demonstration just in front of the Thailand airport causing it to be closed for a day, out of business suffering huge losses.

Up next closely is Korea, North and South Korea always appear in the news yearly due to tensions between cross-border with communist and democratic country respectively with the display of their military might and protection from strong nations from Russia and US respectively as backing.

The rest that follows are just minor national tensions purely for profits and tourism competition that not as important as those above.

Tensions arise for many reasons, without early antidote, it will escalate bigger and bigger over time like a volcano, once erupted, serious damage will be felt and casualties and business losses of people who live around the volcano area suffers.

Tensions are just identical to our health. A cold may be a minor issue which can heal and thus often overlooked, but it is leaves any after-effects, it will lead to serious complications, as cold, flu and cough are the minor symptoms.

Health is the core problem for individuals. Business tensions is the core problems for countries while politics and military related concerns affects the whole world if not at least the surrounding countries when there’s a surge in military might with purchase of weapons.

The next time you get into any disagreement, solve it instantly if not as soon as possible, else it will escalate into another business war whereby companies lose, profits reduced and only the consumers benefit from business battle. If it’s individual, sooner or later there will be more stares, arguments before turning to catfights or business sabotage depending on the genders.

So handle any arguments addressing right to the root of the problem, look at what caused the problem, don’t solve it only from the surface which will not help.

If you need examples: Look at hospitals around the whole world, the patients get sicker and more illness especially terminal and expensive illness find their way onto the patients increasing their burden. Have you ever heard of patients suffering from TCM, not even once at all since history?

Look at the difference, which medical practice should you seek help from, answer is obvious, if you want to save more money, choose TCM, but start early, and it will save you mountains of money bit by bit starting from young as TCM is all about healing all weakness of the body that cause a illness to surface, while western drugs only help heal the illness which has surface and not the root of the problem.

Understand the cause and effect, and entrepreneurship will be a breeze for those who understand it, building a strong mind with the right foundation as basics.

Good habits start from young.

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