In mid-2008, Teletech will be opening a new directory assistance account that will serve Kiwi Customers. This early SITEL's call center operations management has announced that their Yellow Pages account will be shutting down because of the client's decision to award the oursourcing contract to call center rival Teletech in the Philippines.

Sad news for Palmerston North residents in New Zealand but great news for Filipino call center agents in the Philippines looking for a day-shift job. Since it is still very early, no other news can been dug from this story but my best guess is the account will be located in the newest call center site teletech is developing in Sucat Paranaque. It would likely be a 24/7 operations but with the bulk of the shifts in the morning as New Zealand and the Philippines have very little time difference.

To get more updated and follow up news about the latest call centers in the Philippines:

Enter your email address:

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

There's been a featured news article in the abs-cbn news website that Caloocan City Mayor enrico Echiverri will launch a call center in Caloocan City. As I read through the article, I got confused as what it really is. The headline says call center but the body of the article indicates call center academy!

Those 2 things are very different. If it is really a call center, then a lot of Caloocan residents working as call center employees would really benefit from this great opportunity. If it is just a call center academy then it doesn't make any difference. It's just going to be another one of those low quality training centers that are just out to make money out of prospective call center applicants in the job market. I haven't really seen any notable assistance from these so-called call center training schools.

Can somebody from Caloocan clarify this matter?

Source: New Call Center To Open In Caloocan - ABS-CBN News

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

Haven't we all heard of things like these in our work environment? From petty theft to credit card fraud. Personally, I've witnessed some very serious ones in my lifetime. Like the one incident of credit card fraud by one of the agents in my account in one of the call centers I worked for.

Being in a sales account, we were all exposed in vital credit card information of customers. This one agent had the guts to funnel funds from several customers' cards to his own Paypal account. His biggest mistake was he did the crime on his own workstation using his own computer name and password. The result? One week after funneling over $1000 dollars to his account, NBI agents and Police SWAT stormed our account floor to "pick-up" this dumb fraudster in the middle of of his call. The stupid part about the whole thing is: when he was asked why he funneled funds, he replied that he wanted to get into the call center business because he wanted to learn the ropes of outsourcing because he wanted to put up a call center of his own! Least to say, this hombre might be lacking a few bolts in his coconut in the first place. The guy faced credit card fraud charges files against him by U.S. authorities. We never heard from him again.

Of course I've worked with people who admitted collecting credit card numbers and information and used it for variety of reasons. From buying items in Amazon to sending funds to a SMART money card. But that was years ago when I was still an agent and credit card security was not that elaborate.

But I can name 2 incidents that takes the cake in call center crime. Not surprisingly, both are from other countries.

If you work for HSBC recently, you would know why the HSBC call center suddenly got stricter with their employees and requirements. To be able to a bonafide HSBC employee, you would have to present everything from your birth certificate, certified grade school records up to your last certificate of employment. The same thing is required from other HSBC employees in other countries. This was after an HSBC employee from India transferred millions of British Pounds from HSBC customers to his own bank account. The Indian was apprehended and charged. After that HSBC thoroughly screens present and prospective employees through a third party First Advantage.

The best and funniest incident of call center crime was the most recent one I've heard! A guy working in a call center in the U.K. was running a drug dealership and money laundering business from his call center desk in Sheffield. This was not small scale and petty drug dealing. This guy Shoukat Ali Yaqoob was making phones calls in relation to supplying 50 kilograms of pure heroin to at least a couple of towns Yorkshire and Glouchester. This story was featured in BBC. Although the guy was not caught red-handed doing the bad deed while working on his desk. It was kinda funny how other people would use such a mundane type of work for a more lucrative yet dangerous line of work. No guts, no glory right? LOL

If you like this blog post, please consider bookmarking my blog or subscribing to updates by typing in you email address above. Thanks!

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

It's kinda sad what I found today... A friends high-traffic blog has been bitch-slapped by Google AGAIN to nothingness! It's kinda sad because it had to happen to the person who opened my eyes to all of this. I mean blogging, blog design and some SEO. It's from him that I learned about PR and how important it is... well it was it webmasters. His blog was hit by Google demoting it's rank from PR4 to PR3 last October. Today I find his blog having PR0. It might be a glitch but I think Google is is up for more bitch-slapping primarily for those who participate in Text-link ads selling and PayPerPost (the company). Good thing I never did those in any of my blogs.

Not only that, I also saw a very big dip in my friend's traffic and Alexa ranking. Could it be an aftershock effect of Google's actions? Most probably not but one can't help but think it's inter-related because of the chronology of the events. Or it might be because his niche is starting to lose it's fan base.

It seems that more and more Google is becoming a dictator on the internet. Why else would you see a lot of people bitching and moaning about how they couldn't care less if Google reduces their blogs to PR0 trash? For as long as people talk about Google Pagerank, it is a significant and an integral part of net today. As long as you got that little green toolbar up there in your browser, it means you care about because you look at it. A lot of other people and companies want to come up with an alternative to Google Pagerank but it seems that PR and it's algorithm is still the best out there and it is backed-up by the biggest search engine.

It so ironic that people who were constantly monitoring and waiting for the next Google PR update not far back are the ones who are spitting at it now. There's a strong a campaign to disregard Google PR altogether. But again, It's Google's Pageranking. No matter how you look at it, it's Google's so whatever they decide to do with it, people just have to suck it up and deal with it.

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

Read this article by a recognized World Business News website author --->
Does Philippine Call Center Success Translate to BPO, Software Development, and ADM Success?

When I read this article, I felt proud that our call center agents here in the Philippines get recognized for the language proficiency or at least the acquired ability to neutralize regional accent if not mimic a perfect American accent.

But the highlight that really made me both laugh and cringe in embarrassment is the fact that a lot of our beloved call center agents use the phrase "...For a while." During a conversation with the Filipino agent, the author almost believed that he was talking with an American during the whole time and could detect any slip of accent. But then the Filipino agent said "for a while" instead of "hold on" or "please wait a moment". As a manager myself, I've listened to hundreds of live and recorded calls and I must attest that this incident is very very wide-spread and I always slap my forehead everytime I hear this phrase. Sometimes I just couldn't help but laugh too!

It's sad that no matter how extensive and stringent our language training for our call center people is, there will always be minor slips like "for a while." My best guess is it is a "cultural thing." Something that people may have incurred during their studies in school or maybe environmental like hearing it on T.V. and other forms of media.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not "mayabang" because I feel embarrassed or disgusted by language errors like these by my fellow Filipino call center employees. I wrote this as a wake up call and I want you readers to be aware of this so you will not commit the same. We're not in the business of tricking our customers that they are talking to Americans. But since we've already gone a long way in adjusting the way we speak to them and we've already worked hard to neutralize our accents, why don't we go all the way and make sure we speak and do everything perfectly. Ofcourse, nobody's perfect but without a goal, what is a man?

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

Ready to work before 2008 starts? Check out Genpact in North-cybergate in Alabang. They're ramping up and they need fresh new faces to fill out customer service rep posts. This was informed to me by one of the successful applicants and now a manager at Genpact.

Hiring is on-going and will continue until mid-December 2007. All interested can apply by emailing kuh.valentin@gmail.com. She can facilitate speedy processing of your applications. Goodluck and hope you land that job before Christmas!

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

I can't stop feeling excited about this new found career that I made for myself! I just wished I took this much much earlier like say 4 years ago. If I did, I would have been in the same ranks as Darren or Shoe! Haha! Nevertheless, the blogging world is still open wide for pro bloggers like me who want to quit their day job and work for themselves in their own convenient time. Pro blogging in the Philippines is virtually unknown even after T.V. shows showcased what blogging was all about. I still remember Abe Olandres appearing in one for the popular TV talk shows to discussing about blogging. But even until now, pro blogging still hasn't taken off in the Philippines. Not yet!

For some reason I have this gut feeling that Filipino pro bloggers now are intentionally keeping this business for themselves. Maybe to lessen the competition? This type of work is a gold mine in the making if only more Filipinos knew how much they can earn in this business. I've have several jobs in this past but none have made me more excited about my prospects than blogging and the almost endless earning potential of this type of "work"

But what does it really mean to be a "Pro blogger"? To me, it means freedom to work whenever I want without sacrificing my own needs. It means possibly earning as much and if not even more than working in a call center. It means working at home and having more time for my family. It means getting paid in U.S. dollars for the things I do. And more importantly, it means no paying taxes for the hundreds of dollars you get for doing this gig. Ain't that sweet? No government regulator can tax me for jobs they don't even know I do. It's the perfect side-line to say the least! I'm proud to say I'm up to $300 in pay per post earning alone in less than 3 weeks. And this is just my first three weeks in monetizing my blogs.

A good Filipino blogger friend of mine admitted to me that there is some form of politics in the Pinoy blogging world. Some bloggers will deliberately put you down once they know you have a hot gig going on for yourself. To me, I don't want to be recognized or get involved in anybody's politics. I just want to earn me a living to pay the bills and probably tag along some people who want to join me in my newly found quest to make this my new home-based career and probably help each other out along the way.

Fast facts:
1. There are only less than 78, 000 Filipino bloggers around the world. Majority of them blog only as a hobby and are not monetizing their blogs to their full potential.
2. The best and highest rated Filipino blogs can be found in Ratified.org, in which yours truly is number 35 out of 500 blogs that are rated.
4. There are More Chinese bloggers than any other nationality in the world.
5. The most widely read blogger is a Chinese actress turned blogger.

If you like this post and blog, please consider bookmarking this page so you would remember the address quickly if you want to come back. You may also enter your email address above to subscribe to emailed updates from this blog. Thank you much!

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

If you have a blog that you want to make popular for whatever reason, building and seeding links to other websites is a major task you should know. For my 2 blogs, I have almost "turned every rock upside down" to make sure other sites will be linking to them. Making other websites linking to your blog is very important because of several things:

1. It can drive traffic to your blog.
2. An inbound link from a high Pagerank website can dramatically improve or give you an awesome PR.
3. It will give your blog more link popularity.

If bloggers really want to see "results" for their blogs whether monetizing it or gain more readership, "seeding" their links in other websites is very essential. It can gain you more regular readers, subscribers and maybe fans later! :D

To make the most of "seeding" your links and get the results that you want. You have to make sure you "seed" it in high PR pages. It is not necessary for bloggers to "seed" their link on every chance they get. I'll share with you an experience. When I started my Olympic blog early August 2007, I went all out in putting my links in whatever website I can find. I did this because I wanted to get a high PR when Google updates the pagerank. Little did I know I might have been doing my blog more bad than good. I was fairly successful in building my link popularity but I found out that the I could have gotten a better PR if I picked the place to "seed" my link. In "seeding" links, there are two almost opposite goals you may end up with. If you choose to seed your link in as many website's as possible, you probably will end up with more traffic. But if you choose to seed your link to only high PR pages, you may only get very few traffic from it BUT it raises your chances of getting a high PR on the next PR update. Let me cite an equation to make things a little bit clearer:

If you "seed" you links to high PR websites only the likelihood will be this:

PR5 + PR4 + PR6 + PR5 + PR4 + PR5 = probability is that you're blog is going to get a high PR next time. This is because only high PR websites link to you.

PR0 + PR0 + PR5 + PR2 + PR0 +PR4 = ( if you multiply this equation a hundred times ) probability is that you may get the traffic you want but since a lot of PR zero's are linking to you, this may not give you a good pagerank.

The smarter way of linking is making sure you seed your link in high PR pages. I'm not just talking about the homepage but the actual page you're going to put your link in. For those who will be serious in getting their blog popular or at least get some more exposure here's some advice on how you can get started:

1. Get the Firefox with Google Toolbar on the right column. The Google tool bar has a pagerank checker which displays the PR of any website you are viewing. This will give you a quick look and assessment if the website is worthy seeding your link to.

2. Check your blog's backlinks to see which websites to see which websites or blogs are already linking to you.I recommend using iwebtool's back link checker.

3. Contact blogger's with similar niche as your blog to see if they would want to exchange links with you. Usually, I do this by commenting on their blogs and asking if they want to exchange links.

4. The best places to seed your link to are those blogs hosted by new organizations like BBC. I have a valuable backlink from BBC because I made a comment on a high participation discussion in one of the blogs there. You can also seed your link in high particpation threads in forums. The key word here is "high-participation".

I hope I've shared some valuable information to help you out in your blogging. If you like this post and blog, please consider bookmarking this page so you would remember the address quickly if you want to come back. You may also enter your email address above to subscribe to emailed updates from this blog. Please check out my Olympics blog if you have time. Thank you much!

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

This makes me feel very proud! For one day, my Olympics blog moved "the earth of the Pinoy Blogosphere"! I'm referring to the ranking of my Olympic blogin in the most recognized and toughest ranking website exclusively for Filipinos, ratified.org. Here's what that Olympic blog has done since it was accepted in the rankings:

1. On the first day of it's acceptance last October 27, it broke into the Top 100 blogs in the Philippines! Landing at number 42 and ranked as high as number 38 which was 2 days ago.

2. As reported by Abe Olandres of yugatech.com, a lot of Filipino blogs got "demoted" in Google Pagerank and only handful increased in ranking. My blog was the biggest gainer of Pagerank in the "known Filipino blogosphere". By known, I meant those who are recognized and ranked by ratified.org. By gaining a rank of PR4 from PR N/A, I was only 1 out of two in the Pinoy blogging world to do that! The other one was a photography blog.

3. In ratified.org, even if it currently ranks the top 486 Filipino blogs around the world, only displays the top 100 at a given time. My Olympic blog was able to beat the photography blog that made it to PR4 as well. Which makes my blog, the biggest winner in rankings after the PR update.

4. My Olympics blog is the highest rated Filipino Sports blog in ratified.org and possibly in the world!
These achievements, made me very happy and inspired to get better at what I try to do. I started that Olympic blog August 3, 2007 and yet it has achieved so much in just a considerably short amount of time. I hope this serves a good example for those who want to try blogging and earn money while doing so. I would like to say that even in a short amount of time that I've been blogging, I've been dead serious about what I do and I never wanted to stop learning. Even at this early, I humbly offer to share the knowledge I gained through all these to those you would be kind enough to read my blogs. A lot friends helped me to be a better blogger and I want to return it in a sort of "pay-it-forward" scheme.

With that said, please come and check out my Olympics blog by clicking on the image below:

If you like this post and blog, please consider bookmarking this page so you would remember the address quickly if you want to come back. You may also enter your email address above to subscribe to emailed updates from this blog. Thank you much!



Rate Me on Blogowogo

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

If you're a blogger, I'm pretty sure you know something about Google Adsense. If not, then as one of the quotes I read recently said "you must be living under a rock!" Hehe. Google Adsense is the most widely used and popular advertising method on the planet. It's Google's cash cow. Advertisers pay Google to publish ads on those sites that are adsense members. Google gets majority of the profit, bloggers get the scraps. It's a like it or leave it thing. But if you're already a member, you might as well take advantage and get some dollars here and there. You pretty much don't have control of which ads will appear because Google automatically determines and publishes an ad related to your blogs topic. If for example you don't like a particular ad, the most you can do is manage by excluding the URL of the ad from appearing on your site. You can do that in your Google adsense account.

How bloggers get paid by displaying Adsense?

It's pretty simple. When any of our visitors, click on the Google ads we publish, we get some money. Usually just a small percentage of what Google is actually paid. Depending on the amount of visitor traffic your blog gets, there would be a greater chance those ads will be clicked be someone resulting in more earning for you.

Is it easy to earn using adsense?

Yes and No. Yes if you have very high traffic. This is because the higher traffic you get, the more probability that more of your blog's visitors will be clicking on one of your ads. Especially, if your blog's topic is a high-paying adwords keyword (* explained later). No if your blog fits the exact opposite of what I just mentioned. I'll give you example later of highly paying keywords that I've heard can earn you at most &28 per click.

What are the do's and don't in using adsense?

Major no-no when you use adsense is clicking your own ad. Or having someone clicking the ads for you. It's what they call click fraud. Google has some weird high-tech way of determining if you made those clicks yourself or if you had somebody click it for you. Let me share an example, when I was working with my previous company my desk-mate one day came in fuming mad because he said he just received an email from Google that he has been banned and forfeited the $200 dollars he earned for running Google's ads in his website forum because Google found out the clicks made on his ads were fraudulent. He swears he didn't click the ads himself but since he is running a forum, he couldn't really tell who did the fraudulent clicks. He says it may be from someone who got pissed because he banned him from the forum but there no way and no use of finding out now.

There's a lot of Google ads tips out there. A great Google adsense guru is Joel Comm of joelcomm.com. He has some great video tutorials that can be found on Youtube on how to get started in blogging and his Google expertise. I'll give some that I picked up on the net and some taught to me by my friends later. But first let me discuss to you how to position your ads.

Positioning the ads in the "heat zone"

In your blog, there's an area SEO experts call the heat zone. Statistically, that area was found to be the most likely blog visitors will focus their eyes on. Since this area is where they frequently focus their eyes on, it is more likely that it will be the area where they will be interested in something. If they become interested in something, it is almost for sure that they will click on whatever is there on that area. If you are the type of blogger who would want to maximize the earning potential of your blog, what you need to do is position those ads in the "heat zone" so that it will be more likely that your visitors will be interested and click on the ads. Had enough of the suspense? What to know what this "heat zone" looks like? hehe. Okay. They heat zone is shaped like a capital letter F. So what does this mean? It means if you want to earn maximize your adsense earnings, you need to position those ads on your blog shaped like an F. For example, One big leaderboard ad on the top of your homepage either above or below your banner. Second, one 160x600 vertical banner ad on your left most side-bar. And lastly, one ad in between you posts or if you know how to, you can integrate a Google ad within your post. When you do this, the pattern should be like shaped like this:

Ofcourse, you will need to decide if this is right and if this works for you. This is just based on statistical data but everyone is entitled to decide if they want to monetize or not to monetize and just focus on blogging. If you do want, to monetize make sure you monitor the performance of your ad. Try a little experimenting on the positions of your ads and see what works best for you eventually. This advice is not only limited on Google adsense. You can apply the F heat zone to anything who want people to notice more. If you want them to notice your widgets bucks ads you can also do that. The plain simple rule is: place your most important stuff on this F heat zone because it will get noticed first and more often than the other areas of your blog.

Here's rest of the tips I promised:

1. In Google adsense, it takes 2 clicks from a visitor to earn you some considerable money. For you to actually earn, whoever clicks your Google ads will have to be interested and clicks on something on the page he was taken to. If this is done, it should be a considerable amount of maybe $0.50 above depending on the cost per click of that add.

2. Here's a list of high-paying keywords or ads that will pay big bucks to click on. I've even seen some bloggers purely blog about these stuff purely for monetary reasons. Most common words combined with these terms also pays well. What this means for bloggers is if their blog topic is about these things, they stand to earn better because these keywords are paid by advertisers for a high-cost which means higher pay for publisher bloggers.

mesothelioma
insurance
mortgages

3. Blend the colors of your Google ads with the color of the background where it is going to be placed. It would look more natural to your visitors. If the ad is blended, there would be a better possibility that a visitor will click the ads. If you wonder how it should look like, take a look at my ads.

Please read Google adsense terms and conditions page and program policies to get complete detailed information about using Google adsense. More to come tommorow!

If you like this article and blog please bookmark this page or subscribe to email updates so you can get the latest from this blog.



Rate Me on Blogowogo

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

To tell you honestly, I've only been blogging since June 25, 2007. This is actually my first born blog! Haha! I used to be working for a web design company where I met a lot of cool bloggers who helped and inspired me to get started in blogging. It's to them I owe this new "career" that I have. In that company, I met a friend who is actually one of the local top bloggers in the country. He was the one who really gave me inspiration and advice on how I used go about blogging and designing. And so, in some sort of "pay it forward scheme", I'd like to share with you the things I've learned along the way in terms of designing your blog. The main point of this post is how to optimize your blog for your readers and for your reader's browsers. I hope you find these useful.

In designing your blog, here's what your goals should be:
1. Attract more readers
2. Build a readable blog
3. Attract more subscribers
4. Optimize your blog for the majority of your readers.

Tips on the blog template:

1. Since I have experience in using the blogspot templates, I'd be focusing more on that. In choosing your template, you need to make sure the template works in the 2 most common browsers used in the world, Internet explorer and Firefox. Statistics show that common internet users use these two. Before choosing a blog template, test it on both browsers to see if there's any line breaks or if the columns are the same and not under the content. There's a bad experience I'd like to share, my other blog used an old dumb template. I loved the way the template looked on Firefox because that's what I commonly use. I forgot to check it with IE. It took me over a month ( because I rarely use IE ) to find out that the blog looked like an old parchment in IE. I was so mad at myself at that time because I already had a lot of visitors. Almost half of them used IE. I could have possibly turned-off thousands of readers who we're using IE because my blog sucked in their browsers. What's so bad about it you may ask? Well. if your blog template looks weird or stupid, the visitor or reader will get turned off and "walk away" from your blog! That's 1 blog reader less for you each time.

The main point of this advice is you need to use a decent template that would at least look nice to "simple eyes". You have to think about how it would appear best for your readers and not too much on how cool it looks for you. Sometimes simplicity wins you more readers, subscribers or bookmarks who will always come back because you have good content and more importantly your blog looks easy to read.

2. Make sure your blog's home page loads fast - This is very important! We have to realize that most of the internet users are not on high-speed broadband so this becomes a common problem. If your homepage takes ages to load, it turns off your visitors and leaves your blog, never to come back! Bloggers need to make sure that their content appears right away for people to read. Here's a tip: if your visitors can't read anything meaningful or see anything interesting in the first 5-10 seconds of their visit to your website, most often than not they exit your page. You have to strike a balance between loading speed and content. Here's some tips on how to speed up the loading of your page:

a. Be discriminating in choose the widgets that you place on your blog. Widgets are cool and attractive and some even provide you with more traffic, but some widgets really drag to blog's loading time and defeats the purpose. Limit the amount of widgets you put on your blog. Make sure that if you place a widget, your blog will get something out of that widget like earn you money or really get you some traffic. If a "heavy" widget is there just because it looks cool but do not give your blog real "value", then it might not be beneficial to keep that thing in your blog! In choosing a widget, think of the benefits first before attractiveness. As some of you might have noticed, I lost some major widgets I used before like the mybloglog and blogcatalog widgets. I really felt that I'm not getting anything good in those. It looks cool to look at but I asked myself "am I really getting something out of this besides see which bloggers recently visited my blog?" The answer for me was NO. I don't have anything against the 2 widgets mentioned but if you have that widget, make sure you limit it's size to as little as possible because it's a drag. In this tip, you must prioritize usefulness before attractiveness.

b. You need to optimize the size of your images - In free blogspot or if you don't have a separate hosting for your blog, huge images takes a long time to load. Huge image's are cool if you really got something to show like a personal photo that you're proud of! But if it drags your blog, them maybe it's time to reconsider resizing images to speed up the loading time. Consider hosting the images on a separate photo hosting site like Flickr or Photobucket. In that way, the blogspot server will not be the one having a hard time loading the huge cute photo of your baby or your ugly self. Joke!

c. The other stuff that really slows down loading speed of your blog are the following: Flash images or content, chicklets from several different websites. It's cool to show them off on your blog but you always have to prioritize which ones you're blog really needs over which ones are just for show.

The point of this advice number 2 is prioritizing. Here's a tip. Observe how your homepage loads, if your posts don't appear within the first 10 to 15 seconds, then you might need to reconsider redesigning, optimizing or at least rearranging the stuff in your blog. As you observe, take notice of which widget, image or chicklet takes a long time to appear on your blog. If it takes more than 10 seconds for a small chicklet to appear, then you might wan to reconsider keeping that thing.

3. You need to make sure your blog is pleasing to other's eyes. We'd have to admit that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder in general. But in blogging, your goal is to attract readers and not just to keep your own eyes happy! Hehe. Your future readers will not have the same taste in terms of colors. But in general, plain, natural and good color combinations will be agreeable to all. Some may not appreciate "striking colors" or very dark backgrounds because most of the time it becomes too hard to read the content you posted. This is a major factor why i recently decided to redesign this call center blog. The dark background was the common complaint when i ask for feedback from other bloggers. If you would like your readers to appreciate the content content you just wrote, then you might want to think about how the colors would affect their eyes. Colors that are too striking may be attractive but it may give your visitors a hard time reading your posts. In that case, it defeats the purpose of having to post at all. Most of the time, good color combination or using neutral colors will make your readers want to read more.

The point of this advice is a blogger needs to make sure the blog is appealing yet readable. Yes we all have our own tastes and individuality that we'd like to share to our readers. But we also need to strike a balance between what we want people to see and what we want people to to read in our blog. Here's a tip. Notice how popular bloggers like Problogger and Shoemoney designed their blogs? They have very simple color combinations and yet their blog is still attractive. I would have to attribute their huge following to their simplistic design and good content. Observe how they arrange stuff on their blog? They make sure important contents are above "the fold" which means content is what they want people to see first which means they want people to read what they'd have have to say first before anything else. For a blogger like me who knows a little more than I used to, the idea looks very logical.

Here's some more stuff I feel you should know when designing your blog:
1. In blogger, the first things to load on a blog homepage is the the header. Then whatever is on the left hand side of your blog and then everything else from left to right and lastly would be your footer. A good loading speed should be under one minute.

2. The more "moving stuff" you have on your blog, the slower the loading time will be.

3. Use website checkers like sitereportcard.com and mypagerank.net to test your blog's performance and stats.

There some tons of other stuff I'd like to share but this post is getting a tad longer than I want it to be so lets keep the other tips for the future! More tips to come I promise. If you like this post, kindly bookmark my homepage to remember or subscribe to it so you can get regular updates. I really hope this helps you in your blogging. Keep punching!


Rate Me on Blogowogo

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.

Just kidding! Haha! It's still old me, CallCenterVet! After a few months of call center blogging, I just felt bored with the old design. Nothing wrong with the content because with the comments this blog is receiving, I feel I'm truly reaching out to my "call center-kind". :D Thank you so much for all your support and feedback.

As some of you who may notice, I haven't gotten around answering your requests for referrals to some of the call centers and BPO's I featured here in my blog. I sincerely apologize for that. The answers to your requests still remains the same as I have discussed in my previous posts. But let me answer some of them right now. For those looking to apply at Genpact, you can email Hazel at hazelchua@ge.com. She's a great link and have successfully referred some of the readers of this blog! Check out the comment of one of the successful ones. For those looking to work at Firstsource, I'm afraid there's some bits of bad news. Firstsource, unlike some of the BPO's around Manila is not actively hiring. They still do have opening for some agent positions but I believe they are not ramping up agents very fast. For Verizon, well... actually Firstsource handles that. Verizon is Firstsource. I would advice people looking to apply at Verizon/Firstsource to head to North Cybergate Alabang to do a "walk-in" application. Most successful applicant to Verizon are direct hires who just made a walk-in application like my neighbor. I believe there's a couple of call centers that will open around Dec. 2007 or Jan. 2008 but I haven't gotten in touch with my contacts for the details.

For those who have questions regarding applying to other call centers aside from that or need advice on anything call center-related, please make another comment here. This time I promise to answer them back as soon as I can. There's been a lot of things that I need to handle in the past so I wasn't able to do so at that time.

Going back to the re-design of this blog! First of all, this blog will always be here to give you information, advice and help about anything under the call center sun! I will always be here to do that for all of my readers. The reason behind the change of theme is because I felt that we call center employees can earn more than our bi-weekly pay check just by BLOGGING! The time we have "online" can be converted into a lot of "moolah" for us if we just know how to. And this led me to change a little with the direction of this blog. I want to teach you, my readers, how you can turn that extra time on the internet into extra money just by blogging! Because that's what I'm doing right now! Honestly, I've been so busy that I sometimes go overboard and stress myself. With a little perseverance, there's tons of ways people can earn online. And the good thing about it is, it won't cost you a single centavo! Sometimes, it would almost seem like you're earning even while sleeping. This is no SCAM BTW! Hehe. I just want to open your minds to a lot of possibilities you can take advantage of with your free time of 15 minutes to 1 hour! Even if you're at work.

To conclude this long post, the new mission of The Call Center Blogger is to give you call center advice and to help you increase your earning potential through blogging! It's really simple! Even a 13 year old kid can do it! More blogging advice and call center advice in the next posts!

BTW, I'd love to get feedback or reactions regarding how you feel about the new design and theme! I made this myself! Took me 5 hours. Hehe

Please bookmark or "add to favorites" this blog to your browsers so you can just click on it instead of forgetting the URL address. Or you can also type in your email address on the sidebar above to get email updates from this call center blog. This will help me a lot too. Thanks!

If you liked this article,please subscribe to my RSS feed.Thank you.