Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by Chris
I mentioned the other day that we were working on building a site that we can use to offer and promote our expertise on a wide range of web development and content services, well today I’m pleased to introduce Base Sites that aims to do just that.
If you require content, wordpress tweaks or custom wordpress themes, graphic design or programming work, check Base Sites out. Our rates are very competitive and we work at lightening speeds.
Disclaimer: From time to time we will outsource the work to companies and individuals that I have previously worked with. However I can personally vouch for their quality of work, speed and great communications.
You may have noticed that I used the same domain (basesites.com) as I did last year when I launched Base Sites selling web sites loaded with content, that section still remians on the site under ready made websites. I personally like the domain and paid a premium for it a while back, along with having a logo I really liked made sence that we used it!
Posted on June 29th, 2008 by Chris
Over the last few months I’ve seen a huge growth in people, bloggers and even friends becoming really negative about everything in their lives. I understand life is full of ups and downs and everyone has their own problems but is it to much of a hassle to put more effort into the positive things in life? It’s so depressing.
Also - watch out for so called friends cunting people off behind their backs - there’s a very high chance that they do this to you as well. Nothing pisses me off more when I have a beer with a mate and all of the sudden he starts bad mouthing our other friends - What a cunt!
How do you deal with negative people in your life?
Posted on June 28th, 2008 by Chris
Posted on June 27th, 2008 by Chris
Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Chris
I keep opening Word to write a new post but nothing comes into my head… When you have a really tight work schedule with next to no social life, there’s not a lot of interesting stuff to write about. So instead of writing content that you might find useful, I thought I’d go through what I’ve been working on.
We have been designing a lot of MFA (Made For Adsense) sites over the last 3 weeks. We still have a few left which are here and are for sale at only $39 each - a bargain considering there a perfect base to further build upon. We’ve sold around 100 sites so far this month to generate some cash… so it didn’t work out to bad in the end.
Now we have a little cash in the bank we are progressing on with in-house projects. To safe guard potential cash flow problems arising in the future, we’ll be launching a design/coding agency hopefully tomorrow, if not on Monday. We’ll be taking clients on when we need a cash injection otherwise we’ll be passing clients onto some great contacts I’ve built up over the years.
Juice Mag - We haven’t up-dated the mag in a couple of weeks however we have tones of great content ready to upload, hopefully this will resume on Monday. We’ll also be releasing a cool game involving lady-boys next week… so stay tuned for that!
We also have a project that we’ve been working on for 2 months now that is really outside of my box - which is one of the main reasons why I wanted to go ahead with it. I don’t want to give to much away but it’s a cross breed of technaorati and google blog search. It’s never been done before that I know off. For this project to become a success it will require bloggers to get involved so it’s a risky project to launch… more on this in July.
We have just finished planning a world wide city sex guide that we’ll be rolling out… either on the mag or on a separate domain - We haven’t worked out which yet. This will include more bells and whistles than an F1 car! Again, really excited about this project.
As a result of the extra projects and work, I’ve taken on more staff… at the time of writing I have 12 full time staff in 5 different countries! Even though I’m in dying need of a break this is a really exiting time for me and is a lot of fun!
Apart from work, I’ve taken up running - I’m guess I run for a mile or two per night. It’s really great to spend an hour on my own with my ipod in my ears. I find running so therapeutic. You know, it’s so easy to gain weight if your sitting on your arse all day… I’ve added 8kg over the last few months so hopefully it won’t be long before I’m back being handsome with my daily runs 
Posted on June 20th, 2008 by Chris
I don’t cover Thai news or in particular Thai politics here like every other dick and harry who has a Thai related blog but that doesn’t mean to say I don’t keep track of what is going on. Personally I prefer to go straight to news sources, here are the ones I use:
Firstly you have the Thailand Outlook Channel which has updates news videos every few hours. The biggest(?) English National paper here in Thailand: The Bangkok Post is frequently up-dated but the sites architecture is shit. Then there is Google News which is widely known to break news faster than any other resource (you can subcribe via RSS). Another alternative is the BBC World News Asia Channel which has a great one minute world news video along with RSS feed you can subscribe to.
Have a great weekend!
Posted on June 19th, 2008 by Chris
This advert has been running in the cinemas over the last couple of months… I love the tune!
Luckily the ad was on youtube…
The tune is by Donovan Frankenreiter called “Don’t Matter”
Have you come across good tunes from TV ads? If so, list them in the comments!
Posted on June 18th, 2008 by Chris
Jeremy just wrote a great post about why people fail in business but I can’t help but feel he missed the biggest reason of them all: managing cash flow. We’ve all heard the rule of thumb: pay late, pull income in as quickly as possible… If only it was that easy…
Since dropping of client work a few months ago to peruse in-house projects I’m in deep shit experiencing cash flow problems - I’m currently living on next to nothing, selling anything I own that is valuable (from a rolex watch to computers to cameras) and selling my resources for money I would have wiped my nose on 6 months ago. I have no problems doing this, these are sacrifices I’m willing to make to build a successful business.
As Jeremy said in his post, an employee wakes up at 8am, makes themselves a coffee, has a very sociable lunch, goes home at 5 or 6pm and knows exactly what pay cheque they’ll be getting at the end of the month. Now that’s a pretty easy life and I don’t blame people who choose to live that lifestyle…
Let’s look at the other side of the coin. If you are the owner of your own business you have to be prepared for a very different lifestyle. There are no set hours, no set pay and no sociable lunches (well, not for me anyway).
On top of that you have a real negative side effect that not many people can handle… Stress. The stress an owner has when they are responsible for making the right decisions every day, responsible for making sure the staff receives their pay checks on time among hundreds of other components of running a business is tough.
Put it this way, I’m 25 and I have grey hair. I’m not joking, I really do have grey hair. When girls see this they laugh and I personally hate it. When I’m under a lot of stress I get spots… yes, running your own company can even change your appearance!
What I’m trying to say is that running your own business is not easy… you have to be prepared and willing to sacrifice a lot (like I mentioned at the start… I recently sold my rolex that my Dad bought me for my 18th birthday)…
Should you start your own company?
I’d say that if your already thinking about it, then do it as long as you know you can get a job if it doesn’t work out. Personally even though I’m going through a bit of a bad patch right now, I wouldn’t give it up for the world. I see this as a challenge. Managing my own business with staff is right for me, is it right for you?
Posted on June 18th, 2008 by Chris
After a really stressful week managing cash flow problems, it’s great to finally get some good news.
Today I can confirm that over 10,000 visitors have logged onto Juice Mag (with 12k total visits)! That’s a huge milestone in my books
I’m pretty sure we could have reached this goal at the weekend if we had not stopped working on the mag for the last week… unfortunately we’ve had to go back to client work for a short while to generate some cash before we can continue working on the mag. That’s life…
I’m looking forward to writing “Juice Mag hits 100,000 visitors” in a couple of months
Posted on June 15th, 2008 by Chris
I’m a huge fan of reading blogs and news feeds via my RSS aggregator and I must check in a couple of times per day so see what my favorite blogs have written. If you read more than a handful of blogs, a simple to use tool like Google Reader pulls in all the feeds into one location, saving you to visit each blog individually and waiting for each blog to load. If you haven’t used Google Reader before, check out the tour which explains how it works and while your at it, make sure you add my feed
Hat Tip: If you use Google Tool Bar, you can add a button that takes you direct to Google Reader, saving you time typing out the URL. You can create custom buttons as well that link to the web pages you visit most. The fewer click the better in my opinion!
Anyway, getting back to why I decided to write this post, back in August last year I sorted out my RSS feeds into a short list of the best of 19 blogs from over 200! Since then my list started to grow again to levels which I was not able to handle due to lack of time, so this morning I yet again went through my feeds and deleted a lot of the crap and ended up with a nice set of blogs which I can keep up with. I thought I’d share the list with you again as these bloggers really do deserve recognition for their great work:
One Mans Blog
The one Man Blog is the only blog that I can’t assign a category too as John the writer covers so much stuff on so many topics. He tought me that a blog or site doesn’t have to stay in one niche - which is the main reason why Juice Mag covers content in many different areas.
David Airey
A logo designer based in Scotland writes some interesting posts regarding graphic and logo design. I read David’s blog not only because I’m interested in design, but also for the good job he is doing in branding himself.
UK Affiliate Marketing Blog
This is the only blog I read that covers UK affiliate marketing, although the blog does cover other stuff from time to time. (Kieron, any chance for a reply on the email I sent you?)
Matt Cutts
If you work on-line, Matt Cutts, the guy who is in charge of Google’s spam division is a must read!
Mind Valley Blog
The posts have gone a bit down hill of late, but saying that I couldn’t delete this feed this morning as from time to time, they publish some great findings on testing different on-line advertising methods and more importantly, they results.
Official Google Webmasters Blog
The name says it all really. If you publish content on-line, you should really have this in your feed reader for up-dates on how Google manages sites along with updates with their Webmaster Central/Tools.
Pro Blogger
Although most of Darren’s posts are aimed at the newbie level, this is still the best blog dedicated to making you a better writer, web publisher and blogger!
SEO Moz
I’d pay to read this blog! The best blog dedicated to SEO by far!
Shoe Money
I’ve had Shoe Money is my feeds for years – publishing his thoughts and opinions on internet business.
Tyler Cruz
Tyler comes over as a real genuine guy trying to make money on-line - He wrote a review of my base sites project a while ago and really did shred it apart, but the advice and suggestions was well worth it! If you are starting a web based company, I highly recommend his paid reviews.
Official Google Blog
I love keeping up to date with what the best company in the world is doing!
Photo Matt
Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress personal blog.
The Bangkok Bugle
A magazine journalist living and working in Thailand, with a heavy weight on media/publishing in Thailand.
My Thailand Diary
A real down to earth Mum living in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Traveller’s Tales
Shantanu from India publishes his travels and what draws me to his blog most are his great o’ so lovely adventures!
Thailand’s Lost Boy
Although I don’t agree with a lot of Matt writes… it’s still interesting to read another opinion on living and working in Thailand.
The Farang Speaks To Much
A blog about a group(?) setting up a bar in Bangkok covering general topics on living and working in Thailand along with covering the darker side of the city.
Travel Happy
From time to time there’s some great content on both Thailand and other South East Asian countries to be found here.
Guy Kawasaki
A businessman slash investor published a business blog.
Gastronomy
The best food blog I’ve ever seen - Frequently updated by a couple living in Vietnam. Man, their pictures make me so hungry!
Blogging Pro - Daily Blog Tips
As I rely I Wordpress so much, it’s nice to keep up to date with new plugins, themes and general blogging/wordpress news and up-dates.
Wordpress Publisher blog
This blog showcases websites that have taken Wordpress to a whole new level! Literally, anything on the web can be done using Wordpress core code.
Bangkok Guru
Although Tom has just started his blog, I look forward to what he has to say in the near future.
Alitta - The Sabina
Both ladies work for me as senior editors for Juice Mag.
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If you have a blog, why not do the same and give some love to the bloggers that you have on your daily reads
Also, if you have any recommendations for blogs you think myself or my readers would like, feel free to jot them down in the comments!
