It is been 6 months long I have created Blogging Secret, and I think it is time for me to review my blog for this first 6 months (Part 1). In this period of time, currently Blogging Secret has gained decant rankings as below:-

• Page Rank: 3
• Technorati: 9,564 (Top 10k)
• Alexa: 152,016

I’m so happy and satisfied with the current rankings that Blogging Secret has gained as above although I didn’t generate many online incomes now with the help of these rankings. So far, I only have sold 1 private review and 2 text link ads with nofollow. If you are interested in advertising on Blogging Secret, be sure you check my advertise page.

What I Have Done for Blogging Secret in this 6 Months?

1. Think a nice blog name and search for nice domain name which are suit to my niche
2. Join MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog
3. Gained massive traffic from StumbleUpon and BloggingZoom
4. Exchange link
5. Design free wordpress theme named Ads Theme
6. Comment other bloggers’ blog posts
7. PayPerPost advertising
8. Keep blogging niche contents (this is very important)

What is the Next Planning for Blogging Secret?

My free Ads Theme for wordpress is quite popular now and wisely used by Blogspot user after eBlogTemplate has converted Ads Theme to Blogger Template. So now, I’m considering to design a premium wordpress theme which I think it is quality and nice looking premium wordpress theme with competitive price than other competitors.

Blogging Secret launched in November 2007 and it has been 5 months long the blog is lived. When I just launched Blogging Secret, I have played hard to promote Blogging Secret in order to generate more traffic to my blog.

After I launched my first wordpress theme named Ads Theme in the past few months, I only can see a small number of bloggers using Ads Theme, thanks! After 1 month, I can see lots of people using Ads Theme, many bloggers started come to my blog download the Ads Theme, know the existence of Blogging Secret blog and find the good resource of blogging tips and etc.

Apart from that, I’m quite happy to see many regular bloggers will visit my blog from time to time, honestly this is one of my blogs that I can be said it is quite successful blog that can attract many regular visitors. Due to this, my RSS reader is showing 60 readers at the top right area of sidebar currently. I very appreciate for those who subscribed my RSS. I hope to see one find day my RSS readers will increase to 1,000 but of course now I’m aiming for 100 first.

So, if you don’t want to miss single tips on my blog, or you like my blog, please don’t forget to subscribe my RSS to show your support. I appreciate it, thanks!

Updated 11/03/2008: RSS increased 4 Readers
Updated 13/03/2008: RSS increased 5 Readers

I know many bloggers having the same problem like me which our withdraw transaction was pending for more than 48 hours. Today, I have received an email notification from paypal as below and they finally confirmed that the “pending status” is due to their technical issue they have experienced.

Due to a technical issue we have experienced starting on January 20, 2008 we have been unable to successfully withdraw funds to your credit card. As we work through resolving this issue you may experience one of the following scenarios:

• Pending status – if your withdrawal is ‘pending’ then we are still working to resolve the issue and complete your request. We are treating this issue with high priority and will update you as soon as it is resolved.

• Completed status – if your withdrawal is ‘completed’ then we have processed your request and the funds will post to your credit card in 5 to 7 days. You should not see any delays on future withdrawals.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused and we appreciate your business.

I was thinking that this is too late to inform their customers since this issue is occurred on 20 January until today (nearly 1 month). This is not right action to be taken by Paypal, do they know that we are so worry about our money and when we write email to Paypal for the clarification, they kept asking us wait, wait and wait.

If this email notification is sent from that day having the technical issue, then we don’t need to waste our time to follow up on this matter and even contact them for the clarification. I believe that Paypal already received more than thousand of email and contact from their customers around the world, how many times Paypal has been wasted to attend this issue?

Update 11/02/2008: Finally my withdraw is completed today!

This is first time I withdrawn my money from paypal to credit card more than 48 hours (usually within 48 hours), I also don’t know what happen to this transaction. I already sent them ticket and asked for help so that I can withdraw my money as soon as possible.

I don’t know paypal will take how long to resolve this issue, but I already waited 3 days since I sent them ticket to get help on last Saturday. I’m actually too impatience person, every two days I will resent my ticket to remind them.

Blogger, do you face this problem before?

I apologise for slowing down to update the blog post this blog compare with last time. This is because I’m setting up another 2 new blogs right now and busy with adding new blog posts on these blogs.

The blog name of these blog called WordPress Theme Store and Find Online Tools. WordPress Theme Store is a blog that collect free and premium wordpress themes with my recommendation ranking, while Find Online Tools is blog about free online tools on the net.

As for the URL, I will let you all know later because now is not the right time to announce. Be patience!

The Malaysian Dotcom Youth Search has now been closed for registration and the voting is still going on until 18 January 2008. I would appreciate if you can give me a very fast single click to vote for me (click on the banner on the top right corner of my blog).

What is the Malaysian Dotcom Youth Search? According to official site of Malaysian Dotcom Youth Search,

Established in conjunction with Youth ’08 – Malaysia’s Youth Lifestyle Showcase, The Malaysian Dotcom Youth Search is the hunt for websites, portals and even blogs with the ability to generate income and influence communities with an innovative factor. From a community of submitted websites, we evaluate and select the hottest entries to give recognition to technologically savvy youths under 30 working hard behind these sites.

Outcome? With The Search, you will now know the people behind the coolest sites within the Malaysian virtual space.

For more information about Youth Search, be sure you visit the rules here.

Finally, I would like to thanks for your time reading this post and thanks for voting me as well. Thank you!

Update 18/01/2008: Thanks for your voting, and the voting is closed now!

Only 1 day I didn’t online because I went to Kuala Lumpur to meet my old friends, I found that there is a big change of Page Rank on my Google Toolbar. My Blog, Blogging-Secret.com apparently gained PR3 from unranked previously, which means that Google was working on the first round of Page Rank update in 2008. In fact, I didn’t expect Google updated Page Rank so early this time.

I also found that some of my pages got PR3 and PR2, I just feel strange and wonder why my Free Theme page, WordPress Plugin category, WordPress Themes category and archives page got PR0. Who can explain this why?

After paypal allowed many countries included Malaysia can withdraw their Paypal funds through credit card or debit card recently, I heard many Malaysian bloggers said Paypal funds can be withdrawn through Al-Rajhi and Public Bank debit card, then I have went to Public Bank to apply Public Bank Visa Electron Debit Card.

Initially I went to Al-Rajhi Bank, their staff said they didn’t provide this service yet, may be next year. How come they can successfully withdraw their Paypal funds to Al-Rajhi debit card (Refer picture below)? How come some bloggers also said the transaction of withdraw Paypal funds to Ah-Rajhi bank debit card has failed? Really suck service!

I know apply Public Bank debit card might be taken 2 months time, but I think it is worth for waiting because I have no problem to withdraw my money from Paypal funds to my Public Bank debit card, it only take 4-5 days per transaction.

Paypal charged me $5 for the transaction of withdraw funds to my Public Bank debit card. Once it is successfully transfer the money to my Debit card, and then I transfer the money from my Public Bank Debit Card to my Public Bank saving account through e-banking service. After that, I can use my Public Bank ATM card to withdraw my money without any charge.

This is how I transfer my money from Paypal to my Public debit card for $5 only. I hope this can help you!

Finally the LinkWorth Contest Winners is announced today. I’m one of the winners of IPod Nano for this LinkWorth Contest.

Thanks to LinkWorth for selecting my post entry as winner of IPod Nano and congratulation to the rest of the Winners of this contest as well.

I noticed that many sites have selling WordPress themes, some selling $15 per theme (mostly this theme looks not very unique); some selling their themes for the price ranging from $50 until $100 (some themes more high on the price).

Since there are many sites have providing free WordPress theme to download, my question is, will you still buy WordPress theme? You can give a vote for the poll is located at the right bottom sidebar.

I’m not sure how about you, since I know a little bit how to design WordPress theme, then I have never think of buying WordPress theme, unless I think it is worth to buy for those unique and special themes.

Anyway, I hope you can help me to complete this survey. If you like my Ads Theme, you can download here and check it out the demo here.

Update 08/12/2007: The poll made my site load slow and I already take off this poll. Anyway, the result showed that 80% of bloggers will not going to buy WordPress Theme, the rest will consider to buy WordPress theme.