Calling all Japan Related Blogs
September 28, 2005
If you have a Japan related blog and would like to be added to my blogroll on http://www.tokyoessentials.com/blog/ please don’t hesitate to drop me an email.
Please no spam blogs and only sites related to Japan.
Web Development Tools
September 27, 2005
I just finished getting my first WordPress blog up online. You can see it here: Tokyo blog.
I still need to do a bit more work on it, but I was just happy to get it installed. It will be interesting to see how it compares with blogger. One of the biggest criticisms of blogger is that there is no easy way to have “categories” like other blogging tools.
Tokyo Blog
September 25, 2005
I just realized the other day that my Tokyo Essentials site needs a blog. I often go to places around Tokyo and the experience is difficult to write about with the site in its current format.
Rather than making any drastic changes to the current state of the site, I thought that I could add a blog which I could update quickly and rapidly add content to the site.
I thought I would give the popular blogging tool Word Press a try.
My Japan job site now has a few job listings and people are registering everyday. It’s definitely not making any money, but I see this as a long term project which someone might be interested in buying in the future.
Forbes Rich List
September 23, 2005
Forbes have published their latest rich list.
It is interesting to see Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page listed in equal 16th spot. They are only 32 years old and the youngest in list by 8 years.
Google Sandbox
September 21, 2005
Third post tonight and going strong. My beautiful new site dotjapan seems to be getting stuck in the Google “sand box”.
I can’t believe but my own blog has been the best place to ask for help!
I know about adding content, getting backlinks and so on, but I thought that I should at least be able to find my site if I search on just “dotjapan”.
Yahoo seems to be fine.
Would love to hear from any experts out there.
Couple of small updates
September 21, 2005
I have added a couple small changes to the site. I have added a couple of new links on the right hand side, including a feed from my own Japan job site which now has at least a couple of jobs running and a few companies registered with the site.
I frequently get requests to add links to my site and I am generally happy to do so, but the site must be a regular blog or website with some traffic and original content.
I have heard that there are so many spam blogs on blogger that some search engines are blocking everything from blogger.
I know I should get around to putting this on my own domain one of these days. I just don’t know if it is worth it. I would prefer to develop my other web businesses and keep this as one of another rambling blog.
I wonder what the advantages of hosting this site on a separate domain.
Viator
September 21, 2005
The Viator travel tour affiliate has been a nice little performer for me since I joined with them about 2 months ago. I received my first affiliate check with them last week.
Basically, you earn 5 per cent of all bookings that are made through your site. The tours can range from 100 to more than 400 dollars and I have been having at least one tour booked a day through my Tokyo website.
Travel guide sites are definitely worth starting if you are interested in writing about travel. Actually, you don’t even need to do the writing yourself.
Here are some statics to think about from http://newsletter.blizzardinternet.com/Archivestats3.htm
“Nearly 37 million of America’s more than 162-million active Internet users have already purchased travel online. Online travel bookings exceeded $23 billion in 2001, and are expected to reach $63 billion by 2005. (PhoCusWright)
Six in ten online travel buyers have purchased a hotel room or rented a car online.
Nearly one-third of online travel buyers say the Internet was responsible for their travel purchases last year.”
Getting traffic to your site
September 16, 2005
The greatest problem with creating a new site is actually getting people to visit. No matter how great a design your site is, it won’t make any money if people aren’t visiting.
Here are some ideas that I have used:
- Post to forums and have your website in your signature
- Use a Google Adwords campaign
- Write articles and submit them to sites with your website in the signature
- Optimize the site to get search engines visiting. H1 tags, alt tags in pictures etc.
- Continually build on the content of your site. Give the search engines a reason to keep visiting your site
- Advertise on related websites. Usually just some well placed text links perform better than banners.
- Get everyone you can to link to your site. Often a time consuming task, but if you create something worth linking to, you will be blessed with free traffic.
Any other ideas?
I have created a job site
September 13, 2005
I have decided to you use my dotjapan.com domain to create a job listing site.
I was thinking about creating either a list of Japan related links, classified site, apartment site or a job site. I finally decided to go with a job site.
I bought a Mambo component to do this and have been doing the configuration for it the last couple of nights.
My business plan is fairly simple. Offer free listings and hope to make money through advertising. I realize it is going to be difficult enough just to get companies to post, especially when there are currently zero jobs and it is still looking very amateurish.
If you have anything to do with Japan and have jobs to advertise - please help me out! If I can get any traffic to the site, I might also add apartments and a classifieds section in the future.
Election in Japan
September 11, 2005
There was an election in Japan today. Predicitably the LDP have won with at least 70 per cent of the seats. The LDP have been in power forever. It makes elections in Japan a very boring affair. The election was called because the current Prime Minister was having trouble passing in his Japan Post privitization reforms. At least the election has given him the mandate to pass through his reforms. Any reform in Japan I believe is a good thing and the economy can only improve.
Japan has to reform many of its long hold traditions and structures for it to continue to be an economic power. Japan can create the best electronic devices in the world but its business systems are some of the worst in the western world.
Most large companies are still reliant on receiving orders by fax and then having someone keying in the orders in Excel. How hard is it to create a web interface for customers to order products and have them sent directly to the warehous?. It’s pretty frustrating to see, but I believe there are a lot of opportunities for western companies to provide these kinds of services to Japanese firms.
