Friday, 29 February 2008

Make Money With SponsoredReviews.com

One of the ways that I've been making some extra money online is through SponsoredReviews.com as site that basically pays you to write a blog post about a certain product or other site of your choosing.

Pay ranges from US$5 to US$100 per post and this will mostly depend on how valuable your blog is (calculated by Google Ranking and other factors) and how much you choose to charge for posts on your blog.

This blog isn't high traffic by any means with the average number of unique visitors daily being around the 15-30 mark yet I've still made over US$160 in the short time I've been a member.

If you have a blog I highly recommend signing up for SponsoredReviews. Great service, fast payments (through PayPal too!) and very flexible.

Give it a go!

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Labels: blog, internet, make money

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Macha Kit Kat

This post is long overdue! Months ago I bought the new deluxe apple Kit Kat but I also bought it's sister release the Deluxe Macha (I just call it "green tea flavour" personally)!!! It's green! It's overpackaged! It tastes like two day old green tea mixed in with white chocolate!

...it's actually not that bad!

Japanese Kit Kat: Deluxe Macha

Seriously though if I meet one Japanese person who actually thinks eating these new deluxe Kit Kats makes them look trendy, there'll be some serious head slapping going on. Though I guess if people carry Louis Verton bags and shiny metallic gold and silver mobiles in an attempt to look richer than they are. Who knows. Maybe Kit Kats will be the new poodle!

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Labels: Kit Kat Spotlight

Tuesday, 5 February 2008

Love in Japan

Something occurred to me yesterday while teaching a song who's every second lyric was "I love you!" and assigning homework to "Practice saying 'I love you' to your family, etc". ...English teachers sure can be full of crap sometimes.

Of course I always knew this, especially when I was teaching at Nova (R.I.P.) but the topic of "love" and teaching the word and it's "meaning in Western culture" is a great example of just how much language and culture a lot of teachers in Japan can pull out of their arse at the expense of the students' (adult and child) learning.

A lot of teachers seem to present the word "love" as having a lot more meaning and emotion attached to it than the Japanese equivalent, "Ai". They'll say how "Ai" just means to "really like something" because it's used all the time and "Japanese people don't really tell each other how they feel".

But wait a sec! Are you saying you've never "loved" a movie? Never said "I love that tv show LOST"? Saying the word "love" is only reserved for when we mean it is a load of bull. As is the assumption that "in Western countries" everyone tells everyone how much they love them.

Now I'm not saying I don't love my family. I do. But I can't remember the last time I said so in person. Quite simply, it's embarrassing and I'm as "metro" as they come. Of course it's a lot easier to write here or sign a letter "Love Brad" instead of "From Brad" but it's still not the same.

Now I do remember getting a LOT of adult students who would laugh and tell me that they haven't told their husband/wife that they love them in years and visa versa but these same people seemed to be contemplating an affair or have already had several (some with English teachers) and not ashamed to tell a complete stranger about the fact or just don't see their husband or wife due to their insane working hours.

Japan does have a lower than average divorce rate compared to other countries which is mostly due to lack of legal and financial support for divorcees and a massive cultural and peer related pressure. This means more people trapped in unhappy marriages and of course unwilling to tell their spouses how much they "love" them simply because they don't.

Making a generalisation without taking into account the variables is just ignorant.

On a whole you'll really find the same amount of love in Japan compared to other countries and saying otherwise does nothing more than support an aged stereotype that Japanese people are emotionless which is completely untrue and slightly racist.

If a Japanese person loves you, they'll tell you.

Let's try and put a stop to generalisations.

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Labels: japan, Japanese Social Issues, Teaching English in Japan

Sunday, 3 February 2008

Doing a Link Exchange

During the 8 or so years I've been designing websites I've found one of the biggest challenges to be that of getting people to actually see the website that I've designed.

There are many different ways to do this such as promoting social bookmarking websites like StumbleUpon and Digg, creating your own site community and of course the evil spamming (something I'll never sink so low as to attempt). Probably the best form of advertising though is getting a "link exchange" with another site.

A link exchange requires you to place a link to a site on your own website and that site will, in return, place a link to your site on theirs. It works so well that most of my sites' major referrals are from links from other sites. Google search results are always a close second though ironically enough the more links you have from other sites to your site, the higher Google will rank you in their results. This also works both ways as someone might find your site in Google and want to do a link exchange. Both of these methods really work off of each other.

An exception to this though is my small but growing no smoking cafe, bar and restaurant guide blog, SmokeFreeJapan.com which gets about 95% of it's visitors from StumbleUpon something I don't even advertise on that site yet.

A cool site I just found that can automatically create a link exchange for you is Link Exchange Experts who run a free "volunteer" link exchange program where you add some code to your site to display a link from their database while your site's link will appear on other volunteers' sites in "exchange".

They also let you buy text links if you just want other sites to link to yours while keeping your own site clutter free.

There's a great page on link building which explains in more detail how search engines like Google and Yahoo rank sites and why link building is a good idea.

If you want to get your site out there, give it a go. Link Exchanges really are one of the best ways to advertise your site which is why I'll personally start accepting link exchange requests once more as of today.

If you have a Japan or Aussie related blog or site and want to do an exchange, let me know!

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