As many of you know, I am a fan of www.mybloglog.com. I never installed the widget on www.chinasuccesstories.com though, because I reckon it does not match our target audience. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, the time might just be right to give an app like this a chance. Please have a look and let me know what you think? You can find it in the third column on www.chinasuccessstories.com. If you have a Google account, join in. If you don’t, simply make one.
Cheers!
M
PS We had seven sign ups today through Friend Connect – do the math.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Doing business in China, I am
Yet another poll on www.chinasuccessstories.com (sorry for not having enough time to write more articles for this blog currently) is up. Here are the results of the last one.
Doing business in China, shooting for the stars, you currently are ...
• Partner: 10%
• CEO: 21%
• Manager: 17%
• Employee: 15%
• Self employed: 12%
• Employer: 3%
• Retired: 0%
• In between jobs: 5%
• Student: 17%
Friday, October 3, 2008
Not your everyday China business question
"Not your everyday China business question, what is your age?" We asked the visitors of www.chinasuccessstories.com. Here are the answers:
• < 20: 5%
• 20-29: 39%
• 30-39: 29%
• 40-60: 22%
• > 60: 5%
How's that for maturity? New poll question is up, so head over and share your current (job) position.
• < 20: 5%
• 20-29: 39%
• 30-39: 29%
• 40-60: 22%
• > 60: 5%
How's that for maturity? New poll question is up, so head over and share your current (job) position.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Doing business in China? Sex sells!
Every week we send out a newsletter to many thousands of subscribers. In it we feature a couple of articles along with photo’s of the authors. Every article (and other link – there are 30 to 50 links in each newsletter) gets up to 50 clicks on average. Until… we featured a good looking lady. Her picture got clicked a whopping 150 times… So if you are looking to boost conversion, you now know what you have to.
Want to see the picture, to decide if you would click on it too? Find it here: http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/2008/08/13/registering-capital-injection-verification/
Want to see the picture, to decide if you would click on it too? Find it here: http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/2008/08/13/registering-capital-injection-verification/
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Olympic Games China, votes are in
Olympic Games China. On www.chinasuccessstories.com we asked what is your favorite discipline out of this small selection? You answered:
o Aquatics: 13%
o Athletics: 13%
o Badminton: 3%
o Basketball: 11%
o Boxing: 3%
o Cycling: 1%
o Equestrian: 8%
o Field Hockey: 7%
o Football: 6%
o Gymnastics: 19%
o Judo: 2%
o Rowing: 1%
o Table tennis: 3%
o Volleyball: 7%
o Weightlifting: 1%
o Wrestling: 1%
The fact that aquatics and athletics are appreciated is no eye-opener to me, the love for gymnastics came as a total surprise. Did not realize so many people enjoy it over other disciplines mentioned. I'll make sure to tune in in 2012 for that!
M
PS New poll on our site - you know the address: have a look!
o Aquatics: 13%
o Athletics: 13%
o Badminton: 3%
o Basketball: 11%
o Boxing: 3%
o Cycling: 1%
o Equestrian: 8%
o Field Hockey: 7%
o Football: 6%
o Gymnastics: 19%
o Judo: 2%
o Rowing: 1%
o Table tennis: 3%
o Volleyball: 7%
o Weightlifting: 1%
o Wrestling: 1%
The fact that aquatics and athletics are appreciated is no eye-opener to me, the love for gymnastics came as a total surprise. Did not realize so many people enjoy it over other disciplines mentioned. I'll make sure to tune in in 2012 for that!
M
PS New poll on our site - you know the address: have a look!
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The Beijing Olympics
As we are not a news site, we choose not to cover The Beijing Olympics on China Business Success Stories. We do love watching The Games though. Our favorite sport / discipline? Out of this small selection? ->
Aquatics; Athletics; Badminton; Basketball; Boxing; Cycling; Equestrian; Football; Gymnastics; Hockey; Judo; Rowing; (Table) tennis; Volleyball; Weightlifting & Wrestling?
Hop over to www.chinasuccessstories.com and find out!
M
PS The results of the last poll are in as well. We asked ‘What’s your annual income (in USD)?’ You answered:
o < 25,000: 19%
o 25,000 – 50,000: 20%
o 50,000-100,000: 24%
o 100,000-250,000: 27%
o >250,000: 10%
Aquatics; Athletics; Badminton; Basketball; Boxing; Cycling; Equestrian; Football; Gymnastics; Hockey; Judo; Rowing; (Table) tennis; Volleyball; Weightlifting & Wrestling?
Hop over to www.chinasuccessstories.com and find out!
M
PS The results of the last poll are in as well. We asked ‘What’s your annual income (in USD)?’ You answered:
o < 25,000: 19%
o 25,000 – 50,000: 20%
o 50,000-100,000: 24%
o 100,000-250,000: 27%
o >250,000: 10%
Monday, July 21, 2008
Mybloglogrocks
All of you out there promoting your websites, know that these days it takes more than some good old SEO & SEM to get a proper ranking. Social Media Marketing is what’s hot. A phenomenon Google takes into account when measuring you up. How I know? Because it is what I would do If I was Google (so far a proven strategy). Plus, simply lookup your domain (our mine: www.chinasuccessstories.com) on Google and check the results. The social media sites are shown first – even before .gov and .edu domains.
Now, enter Mybloglog. A great site in itself, which now helps you cross connect to the people you have hooked up with on youtube, del.icio.us, digg, etc…
Why this is great?
Well if you are anything like me, you have spent a lot of time finding potential friends and adding them to your account on one platform. All that time now gets rewarded by Mybloglog by enabling you to connect to exactly those people on other sites. By doing so enhancing your presence / value / ROI on each of those websites. All it takes is switching of your popup killer, press 1 button on http://www.mybloglog.com/user/connector, and you’re off! Enjoy.
M
Now, enter Mybloglog. A great site in itself, which now helps you cross connect to the people you have hooked up with on youtube, del.icio.us, digg, etc…
Why this is great?
Well if you are anything like me, you have spent a lot of time finding potential friends and adding them to your account on one platform. All that time now gets rewarded by Mybloglog by enabling you to connect to exactly those people on other sites. By doing so enhancing your presence / value / ROI on each of those websites. All it takes is switching of your popup killer, press 1 button on http://www.mybloglog.com/user/connector, and you’re off! Enjoy.
M
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Quick China bizz poll question
A Chinese saying: With money you can buy a clock, but not time. Quick poll question: What’s your annual income (in USD)?
Answer here ->
http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/
Answer here ->
http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Quality Control in China
Quality Control in China
May 20th, 2008 by China Business Success Stories
Tags: business, Life in China, Product quality
Quality Control is a crucial part in the process of importing from China. Pressure on production costs, distance, time and cultural differences make it unavoidable. Implementing Quality Control allows the importer to :
- Minimize the risks (and associated costs) linked to quality, loading, warehousing or non-compliance issues : “My products have been rejected by customs because the labelling done by my Chinese supplier does not comply with European standards.”
Read the rest of “Quality control in China” or post a comment>>
----
I'm posting this here to see which of our supporting blogs delivers the most/best traffic to our China site. Do you want this blogspot site to outperform our Yahoo 360 one, or the one on Bloglines, or the shared Google reader one, or... ;-) Then select one of the hyperlinks above!
M
May 20th, 2008 by China Business Success Stories
Tags: business, Life in China, Product quality
Quality Control is a crucial part in the process of importing from China. Pressure on production costs, distance, time and cultural differences make it unavoidable. Implementing Quality Control allows the importer to :
- Minimize the risks (and associated costs) linked to quality, loading, warehousing or non-compliance issues : “My products have been rejected by customs because the labelling done by my Chinese supplier does not comply with European standards.”
Read the rest of “Quality control in China” or post a comment>>
----
I'm posting this here to see which of our supporting blogs delivers the most/best traffic to our China site. Do you want this blogspot site to outperform our Yahoo 360 one, or the one on Bloglines, or the shared Google reader one, or... ;-) Then select one of the hyperlinks above!
M
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
China Business Success Stories’ PageRank by Google
We did it! Just as I was about to stop focusing on PageRank as a means of determining just how much Google loves us, www.chinasuccessstories.com went from 4 to 5. I wrote about it a few times here. Wondering what the changes in Google’s algorithm were that kept us on 4, while it should have turned 5 a while ago. Thinking old school.
What changed? We kept publishing a lot. We kept building back links. We stayed true to our focus of providing decent content. We added some pages. But apart from that? Not sure what it was exactly. My guess is a combination of things. Plus some governments sites linking to us. Come to think of it. That is what probably did it! Combined with Yahoo beating Google at their game and Google learning from them? Alexa.com changing their completely weird algorithm with Google following? Technorati giving us more authority? LinkedIn driving quite some traffic to us? What makes Google tick? You tell me.
M
PS I suspect Google of looking at the traffic we get without their help, to determine our worth. At least that is what I would take into account if I was Google.
What changed? We kept publishing a lot. We kept building back links. We stayed true to our focus of providing decent content. We added some pages. But apart from that? Not sure what it was exactly. My guess is a combination of things. Plus some governments sites linking to us. Come to think of it. That is what probably did it! Combined with Yahoo beating Google at their game and Google learning from them? Alexa.com changing their completely weird algorithm with Google following? Technorati giving us more authority? LinkedIn driving quite some traffic to us? What makes Google tick? You tell me.
M
PS I suspect Google of looking at the traffic we get without their help, to determine our worth. At least that is what I would take into account if I was Google.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Flying to China for Business?
Flying to China for Business, do you book First, Business or Economy class? We asked. You answered:
First class: 6%
Business class: 29%
Premium Economy: 18%
Economy class: 46%
New poll coming up!
M
BTW We are looking for an intern, preferably living in The Netherlands, please see http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/2008/04/24/stage-china/ (Stage is Dutch for Internship), refer a friend!
First class: 6%
Business class: 29%
Premium Economy: 18%
Economy class: 46%
New poll coming up!
M
BTW We are looking for an intern, preferably living in The Netherlands, please see http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/2008/04/24/stage-china/ (Stage is Dutch for Internship), refer a friend!
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
What's your Naymz in Chinese?
OK, in my effort to grow http://www.chinasuccessstories.com through SMM, this will be the last China / non-China community I join, for a long time to come. It is called Naymz. And I need you there for what they call 'rep score'. My reputation, assessed by you, seen through the eyes of Naymz.
My assessment of Naymz so far?
Where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, reputation according to Naymz seems to have a lot to do with adding email addresses and websites to their database. Also the features that look promising are paid services after a 30 day trail. So I'm not sure what to think of it. But I do like the fact that they strive to get your sites better noticed by Google.
Anyway: look me up. For another 28 days, my Chinese Business rep is at stake through http://michiel.boer.name
My assessment of Naymz so far?
Where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, reputation according to Naymz seems to have a lot to do with adding email addresses and websites to their database. Also the features that look promising are paid services after a 30 day trail. So I'm not sure what to think of it. But I do like the fact that they strive to get your sites better noticed by Google.
Anyway: look me up. For another 28 days, my Chinese Business rep is at stake through http://michiel.boer.name
Monday, March 31, 2008
China XING
Just wrote this welcome message for new members joining our China group on XING. Hoping it will grow as fast as our China Business group on LinkedIn does (over 2000 members and counting):
Welcome to our group on XING, an extension of www.chinasuccessstories.com and following our mission statement aiming to “help you get that extra leverage doing business in or with China, and prevent you from making mistakes that cost others, who found out the hard way, dearly.”
What you can do to help make the China Business Lounge Group a success: simply being a member and responding to fellow associates if they ask a question, is all it should take to benefit from the combined knowledge of the members. If you want to add more value please consider inviting friends, coworkers, employees, associates, relatives, family members, colleagues: anybody with a professional link to China to become a member as well. It is quite easy, forward this message, or simply email this link:
http://www.xing.com/net/chinalounge / http://www.xing.com/group-17865.9f20cb/7874904
Also, if you are on LinkedIn, you are welcome to join us here as well: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36656/50377703F693 It does not offer the functionality XING does, it is a lot more basic. But it might just help you find even more kindred spirits.
In the weeks to come, we will be building the China Business Lounge Group. Adding more tools for members and making sure it will prove to be of added value for you. Meantime: if you want to help out, have an idea, a question for other members, or hold any thoughts you'd like to share, do not hesitate! Just let me know, I'd be happy to help you out!
Michiel
PS If you want to add me to your professional network on XING, please see www.xing.com/profile/Michiel_deBoer3.
Welcome to our group on XING, an extension of www.chinasuccessstories.com and following our mission statement aiming to “help you get that extra leverage doing business in or with China, and prevent you from making mistakes that cost others, who found out the hard way, dearly.”
What you can do to help make the China Business Lounge Group a success: simply being a member and responding to fellow associates if they ask a question, is all it should take to benefit from the combined knowledge of the members. If you want to add more value please consider inviting friends, coworkers, employees, associates, relatives, family members, colleagues: anybody with a professional link to China to become a member as well. It is quite easy, forward this message, or simply email this link:
http://www.xing.com/net/chinalounge / http://www.xing.com/group-17865.9f20cb/7874904
Also, if you are on LinkedIn, you are welcome to join us here as well: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36656/50377703F693 It does not offer the functionality XING does, it is a lot more basic. But it might just help you find even more kindred spirits.
In the weeks to come, we will be building the China Business Lounge Group. Adding more tools for members and making sure it will prove to be of added value for you. Meantime: if you want to help out, have an idea, a question for other members, or hold any thoughts you'd like to share, do not hesitate! Just let me know, I'd be happy to help you out!
Michiel
PS If you want to add me to your professional network on XING, please see www.xing.com/profile/Michiel_deBoer3.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Chinese fortune
LinkedIn, Plaxo, Spock, Facebook... and then some. New addition? -> http://www.fcclub.com/profiles/chinabusiness The fortune connection club. Look me up, let's stay connected!
M
M
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
How many times a year do you go to China?
As we are currently getting our website ready for advertisers, sponsors, affiliates and other partners, we started conducting some additional research on our demographics. The results of which I am happy to share here. First up we asked, How many times a year do you go to China? The results are:
I haven't been yet: 25%
1 - 2 times: 23%
3 - 5 times: 18%
6 - 9 times: 4%
10 times or more: 4%
I live in China: 27%
Next question to the 50% of our visitors that fly quite regularly to China, and the 25% that seems to be planning to do so in the future? Fly over to our China site to find out!
I haven't been yet: 25%
1 - 2 times: 23%
3 - 5 times: 18%
6 - 9 times: 4%
10 times or more: 4%
I live in China: 27%
Next question to the 50% of our visitors that fly quite regularly to China, and the 25% that seems to be planning to do so in the future? Fly over to our China site to find out!
Thursday, March 6, 2008
From China with love
I have been rather quiet on this blog, because of some other time consuming hobbies. One of which being my China Business site www.chinasuccessstories.com The good news is that it has been worth the wait though, as I found something that you will love. If you love getting traffic to your site from Google that is, and if you love to get some traffic from the biggest Chinese Search Engine: Baidu.
The key to unlocking lots of love from Google and Baidu is called Taragana. It is a plugin for your (Wordpress) blog, that translates your pages into numerous other languages. What makes this plugin different from others is the fact that it caches translated pages for instant access, and for indexing by, yep you guessed it, Google and other search engines.
Within a couple of weeks this is what happens. If your site consists of say 1500 pages, in no time Google thinks it consists of well over 10.000. Have a look: http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-29,GGLJ:nl&q=site:chinasuccessstories%2ecom
The number of inlinks increases similarly. Making Google believe your are bigger and better then you actually are. A essential tool in courtship in any relationship, right?
Also people from around the Globe – Brazil, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Italy – start to find your site.
And to make things even better: Baidu is suddenly interested. Because Baidu predominantly feels like indexing Chinese sites, in your log files you will find a serious effort by their spider to find out what you are about.
The plugin isn’t free, but priced at 30$ it sure is a bargain for making the prettiest two websites in the world love you right back!
The key to unlocking lots of love from Google and Baidu is called Taragana. It is a plugin for your (Wordpress) blog, that translates your pages into numerous other languages. What makes this plugin different from others is the fact that it caches translated pages for instant access, and for indexing by, yep you guessed it, Google and other search engines.
Within a couple of weeks this is what happens. If your site consists of say 1500 pages, in no time Google thinks it consists of well over 10.000. Have a look: http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-29,GGLJ:nl&q=site:chinasuccessstories%2ecom
The number of inlinks increases similarly. Making Google believe your are bigger and better then you actually are. A essential tool in courtship in any relationship, right?
Also people from around the Globe – Brazil, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Italy – start to find your site.
And to make things even better: Baidu is suddenly interested. Because Baidu predominantly feels like indexing Chinese sites, in your log files you will find a serious effort by their spider to find out what you are about.
The plugin isn’t free, but priced at 30$ it sure is a bargain for making the prettiest two websites in the world love you right back!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder?
While Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama were busy splitting the votes these past few weeks, our electoral college on www.chinasuccessstories.com was faced with a much easier choice to make. After redesigning our China Business site we asked: what do you think of our new design? Now some say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If there is some truth in that, we are faced with a problem…
Here are the results:
Excellent job: 42%
Nice: 34%
Better than before: 8%
Poor: 3%
Ugly: 14%
Now that is a big – huge! – compliment to the designer, isn’t it? We will make sure to let him know!
The problem, as far as beauty is in the eye of the beholder is concerned, is this. With well over 75% of our visitors liking the looks, we either have:
...an extremely homogenous demographic (with people from all over the world visiting?)
...made an award winning design (we take pride in what we do, but we simply cannot be the world’s most beautiful website; our budget doesn’t allow for it)
...an easy to manipulate poll system (try it yourself on www.chinasuccessstories.com, it is impossible)
...have fans that vote, many others that don’t (actually this is plausible)
So what is it? I’ll go for the last option. Thanking everybody who bothered to express their view!
M
And to the strikingly small minority that sees room for improvement: please tell me what you think www.chinasuccessstories.com needs to do to get you over to the 75% side?
Here are the results:
Excellent job: 42%
Nice: 34%
Better than before: 8%
Poor: 3%
Ugly: 14%
Now that is a big – huge! – compliment to the designer, isn’t it? We will make sure to let him know!
The problem, as far as beauty is in the eye of the beholder is concerned, is this. With well over 75% of our visitors liking the looks, we either have:
...an extremely homogenous demographic (with people from all over the world visiting?)
...made an award winning design (we take pride in what we do, but we simply cannot be the world’s most beautiful website; our budget doesn’t allow for it)
...an easy to manipulate poll system (try it yourself on www.chinasuccessstories.com, it is impossible)
...have fans that vote, many others that don’t (actually this is plausible)
So what is it? I’ll go for the last option. Thanking everybody who bothered to express their view!
M
And to the strikingly small minority that sees room for improvement: please tell me what you think www.chinasuccessstories.com needs to do to get you over to the 75% side?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Starting a business in China
"This article is among the most helpful I’ve ever seen if you are considering starting a business." And... "This post ought to be subtitled “The Fantasy Edition” as it has virtually no connection to reality." What are they talking about? And who's right or wrong? You be the judge: http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/2008/01/09/starting-business-china/
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Social networking for China Success Stories
Thanks to my activity on LinkedIn, I keep getting introduced for Spock and Plaxo. So I decided to give them both a go. From now on you can meet me here as well:
http://www.spock.com/Michiel-de-Boer-TrrD1uS (check out my 'Spock Power')
On Plaxo I don't know if I have a unique URL yet. But you will find me through the China Business group I started on:
http://china-business.plaxogroups.com/
What I like about Plaxo is the fact that it is easy to import feeds from other platforms. But I do not completely trust them (yet?). What I like about Spock is the simplicity. In both cases, I doubt if they will mean more to my business then LinkedIn has so far.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mmcdeboer
Hope to meet up with you anytime soon!
M
PS Almost forgot, I'm here as well: http://community.globeforum.com/profile/michiel_deboer
http://www.spock.com/Michiel-de-Boer-TrrD1uS (check out my 'Spock Power')
On Plaxo I don't know if I have a unique URL yet. But you will find me through the China Business group I started on:
http://china-business.plaxogroups.com/
What I like about Plaxo is the fact that it is easy to import feeds from other platforms. But I do not completely trust them (yet?). What I like about Spock is the simplicity. In both cases, I doubt if they will mean more to my business then LinkedIn has so far.
If you want to connect without using Spock or Plaxo, you can still find me here:
www.xing.com/profile/Michiel_deBoer3http://www.linkedin.com/in/mmcdeboer
Hope to meet up with you anytime soon!
M
PS Almost forgot, I'm here as well: http://community.globeforum.com/profile/michiel_deboer
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
China online
Yeeaaah! We did it: we launched the v2.0 of www.chinasuccessstories.com Many thanks to R, N, S, big G and last but not least our Alpha male J. Still a lot of work left though, so I hope to find some China time-off time soon to keep you updated on what works best as far as SEO/SEM is concerned. In terms of content, according to our visitors this is what we need:
China Business Success Stories v2.0 should feature:
A China Wiki: 21%
Chinese culture Q&A: 21%
Business directory: 37%
Chinese Trade Fair calendar: 21%
With one of these four online, hopefully you'll forgive me for keeping this a brief post ;-)
M
China Business Success Stories v2.0 should feature:
A China Wiki: 21%
Chinese culture Q&A: 21%
Business directory: 37%
Chinese Trade Fair calendar: 21%
With one of these four online, hopefully you'll forgive me for keeping this a brief post ;-)
M
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