Dear blogger friends,

I’m sure that many of your friends and family has asked you “What’s this blogging thing?” or “Can you help me with my blog?”

And then.. you want to help them but sometimes they have so many questions and you need to go off and do your own thing but you’re paiseh to say no to them because this is your friend / favourite auntie…

If that’s ever happened to you before, I’d like to ask you a favour. Please send your friends and family with blogging questions to me, or more specifically my upcoming workshop called Blogging Your Way To Success. Here, I even made a video to explain what the workshop is about.

For those of you who prefer to read (or you’re experiencing #streamyxsucks), here are the highlights:

• We’ll start at the basics – how to create a blog & write posts, upload images, etc
• We’ll learn about WordPress 3.0, the latest and the greatest
• We’ll learn how to get more readers, promote your business and everybody’s favourite topic – how to make money online!
• The workshop is suitable for beginners with no experience, people on Blogspot who want to switch to WordPress, those who want to launch a blog shop and those who need a simple website but have no budget

If they have questions, please direct them to my Buzzmedia website to find out the full details & to contact me – http://buzzmedia.com.my/events/nst-blogging

If you don’t have anyone you can think of to recommend to attend the workshop, please go to the event page and click the Facebook Like / Recommend button. At least your Facebook friends will see it and can decide if they want to come.

And if you do refer me a few friends, I will do something nice for you. Maybe I can buy you lunch, or help you with your blog theme or buy you Problogger’s book – I’m open to suggestions.

Thanks! You’re the greatest

Sincerely,

David a.k.a. @blogjunkie

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It’s been roughly 6 weeks since I’ve started up Buzzmedia again. This is a post to update you on what I’ve been up to and try to explain what it is that I do (since lots of people don’t understand).

First, God has been good in providing me with a steady stream of projects so that I don’t starve to death. In fact, my income for July was almost equal my last drawn salary at AGENDA. Encouraging, but still a long way to go.

Second, I will not attempt to explain what is it exactly that I do for a living now, with examples from the past 6 weeks.

How I earn a living

Web strategy consulting. This involves me helping other companies understand and make use of the internet to promote their business. In this capacity, I sit in meetings, listen to the client and then put together a proposal with recommendations for them or their partners to execute. I try not to do the execution myself. This is one of the most interesting activities I’m involved in at the moment and helps me keep learning all the new stuff in online (or digital) marketing, but doesn’t pay as well as I’d like it too. When I make a name for myself hopefully I will be able to charge more for this service.

Training & seminars. Apparently I happen to know quite a bit about this online marketing business and in July, I’ve actually delivered 2 seminars on the topic. Specifically the topics I provide training on are introduction to online marketing, analytics and optimisation, and social media. See the embedded slideshow below to if you don’t understand the term ‘social media’. No, it wasn’t me who put together the presentation below (although I wish I had).

Grunt work (website development & email marketing). I call this grunt work because it’s the activity that is most commoditized among all my income streams. I actually find it fun to build websites and pretty emails, but it involves the most hair pulling. Some projects I’ve worked on recently is rockstar blogger Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Non-Conformity email newsletter and my friend’s Dubrovnik Restaurant website.

Blogging. As you may know I run quite a few blogs and most of them have advertisements on them. I do make some pocket money from them, but my main reason for blogging is to meet new and interesting people and certain blogger privileges, like attending the Maxis iPhone 3GS official launch recently

In summary…

Wow, you do so many things–how do I explain what is it my nephew/friend does for a living?

Let me start with what I don’t do. Dear aunties and uncles, I don’t work in IT. The internet is not IT. IT involves lots of gizmos and equipment like in the picture below.

Flicrk photo from camknows

The work I do is more refined. I’m a marketing consultant, advising companies large and small to help them understand, get started and continuously improve their marketing activities on the internet.

Aiyoh, complicated. Ok then, here’s the plain English answer:

David works in advertising, but on the internet. He designs a new generation of advertising techniques and teaches it to his clients.

Ok? Thanks, bye.

After about a year since I joined AGENDA, I am striking it out on my own again. Lot’s of friends and colleagues have asked me why and it’s quite difficult to explain. To help explain (and remind myself why I made this decision), I’ve created this little graphic:

Those who know Seth Godin will recognise it as “The Dip” from his book of the same name. The Dip is the crappy part that you need to push hard and slog through before you achieve massive success.

For me, I will transition from a pretty good career on the left to the life goals and the things that are important to me on the right. Along the way I know and expect to get caught in the Dip, but this graphic will help remind me exactly why I’m doing this and the rewards that await me when I slog through. Yes, afternoon naps are really a life goal for me

On the top of the list of my life goals is living fully and consciously. With this I mean that I want to decide my life’s path and not just ‘flow along’ with everything else. Too many people just allow themselves to flow along in life. I want to be able to guide my way towards something I can call my own, that I will look forward to when I wake up each morning.

Quitting my job and running my own business is the only option I see (at the moment) that puts me in direct control of my journey towards my life goals. I like having a job, and I’m not saying my employer sucks, but it’s too easy to get caught up with work and end up just doing stuff blindly or un-consciously. Man, that sounds like crazy hippie talk.

Making this decision is not easy and involved a lot of thought. Now that I’m married, it’s not all about myself and my lovely wife, Pei Chyi, has really been supportive throughout. Thank you dear, I really couldn’t do it without you.

Stay tuned! It may take a while, but in my next post I’m going to describe what I’ll be up to. Thanks everyone for your support.

Update 6 July: I’ve launched my business site

A year ago I ditched my old job and began life as an entrepreneur. But this past month I’ve gone back to work for ‘the man’. In this case the man is AGENDA, a forward-looking interactive, digital agency. They’re forward-looking because they realise that the web is changing and that the social web is the next big thing. Which is the reason they’ve hired me.

At AGENDA, I’m the ‘social media guy’. I’m helping them wrap their brains around what social media means and to help build up their social media capabilities. My CEO is an early pioneer of web technology in Malaysia but he’s still learning and always wanting to improve.

Lots of people have asked why I decided to join AGENDA. Well, AGENDA gives me lots of opportunities to do social media work, with some really great clients. In this first month, I’m already working on clients like Xbox and Maybank. AGENDA is already a leader in digital media and once it incorporates social media into its portfolio, we’re pretty darn kick-ass.

Also, it turns out that I’m not such a great entrepreneur. Yes, I’m not afraid to strike it out on my own but I’m also not afraid to admit my shortcomings. Sure, I was paying my bills and I could probably also work with blue chip clients if I had continued on my path, but it would have taken much longer. AGENDA is a shortcut to my career goal I guess. Plus, I was disorganised as hell and a steady income and job security isn’t bad either…

So what happens to Buzzmedia? Well, existing clients will continue to be supported. I won’t be actively soliciting clients, but I’ll still help friends with their online marketing. In the meantime, the website will be a holding place for my upcoming book…

Today I officially began life as an entrepreneur. I’ve quit my job and while my parents don’t really approve I’ve taken the plunge to start Buzzmedia, an online marketing solutions provider. I’ve not had much time to blog and promote this venture of mine online because I’ve been busy with a client project, so I guess that’s good that I have work.

It’s been an interesting day and already it has thought me lots of things. Although I have work, I won’t get paid till later and that it something that really scares me. I’ve already incurred some costs in preparing collateral and resources for Buzzmedia but what I’m earning from this present project will only come in later this month. And that’s if they pay on time. And it’s still not enough to cover my monthly expenses.

Another obstacle is self-discipline. I was pretty much in ‘the zone’ today working but there were lots of times when looking up answers online led to a rathole to another rathole to another rathole.

Day 1 has been scary to say the least, but that fear has kept me more motivated than I’ve ever been in my two previous jobs. Hopefully once I get on top of things, have more jobs in hand, I’ll relax and start to enjoy the ride. One thing that has been helping me deal with this big new world of entrepreneurship is Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch. It’s a totally awesome book with really practical marketing advice. It’s so great that I’m going to incorporate the tactics and strategies that Jantsch writes about in my products and services. I highly recommend it to any aspiring entrepreneur and small business owner. I’ll write up a more thorough review when I have the time.

Till then, I’m looking forward to Day 2.