The Silent Room

A lot of my visitors have asked me various questions about the way I blog. From things like my taking down the Saybox chat box from the sidebar, right to how I reply blog comments. Mostly the questions revolved around the things that could boost my site traffic. At which I ask them “Why would I need a big traffic boost?” and without skipping a beat they said “Can make money, what?”

Yeah, making money through blogging. Some people think that it’s the greatest thing since bottled peanut butter. While I don’t have anything against that idea, I do think that many people have misunderstood that notion and I’m not too happy about that fact. More than a few people have come up to me and say stuff like “Why you never put ads on your blog one, can make money you know. You’re wasting the opportunity!”

O RLY? If you feel like you’re losing out, then by all means go on and pepper your blog with ads. I don’t have to do all that and I still get plenty of perks just by holding a simple and ad-free blog. What perks, you ask?

This is where I really feel like laying the smackdown on all of you blogvertisers. Without having put up a single ad or sponsored post, I have received two awesome things any blogger would definitely want: free domain, AND free hosting.

All I did, was humble blogging. And being nice to people.

The Mexican Studio
Some of my older blog-readers have come a long way with me and have seen how I went from a blogspot.com address, to a .net domain, and later to a .org domain and now with .com.

When I first decided to shift to a WordPress blog sometime during 2005, I started to learn about getting a domain and webhost. I’ve always wanted my address to be thesilentroom.com, but unfortunately, I was a little too late because I found out that the domain was already purchased by someone else from South America. What’s worse was that he already paid for it for 10 bloody years, that is until 2015.

I gave up and decided to let it go, and settled with a .net domain. Sometime in 2006, I checked that .com domain to see what it’s like. Apparently the site is still ‘Under Construction’ after all this while. So I contacted the owner in case he’d be interested to sell the domain name to me.

Many many months later, I received an email from the owner saying that he doesn’t need the domain anymore. His original plan was to make a website for a recording studio, The Silent Room, that he was going to establish with a friend. Unfortunately, they decided against that name, and therefore that domain has gone to waste.

So I offered to pay for the remainder of the 10 years that domain is subscribed for. However, I don’t have a PayPal or credit card and he thought that doing cash transfers proves to be too fussy. I kept thinking of a way to pay this man, when one day he told me…

Which means he gave me a domain that is already paid for until 2015! Needless to say I was overjoyed, and words fail to express the amount of gratitude I owe him. So, on March 2007, I shifted this blog to it’s newest and final home. And I couldn’t have done it without the help from the awesome people who provide my webhosting, Blogasian.

Malaysians for Malaysians
When I was making plans to subscribe to a webhosting service, I went around looking for providers. I came upon a forum thread and established contact with Blogasian for the first time.

Back then, they had this “chicken rice” analogy of selling their webhosting plans. They offered hosting in small modules for low prices, which means that if you want a bigger space and bandwidth you just buy more modules. So I started small, with only four modules that cost me less than RM40/year.

Throughout my subscription, the guys at Blogasian have been extremely helpful and lenient towards the total newbie that was yours truly. I have troubled them countless times with domain shifting and changing packages and server issues. However, they were very patient and were kind enough to bear with my whims and fancies.

On top of that, they’ve also given me bonuses in the form of extra bandwidth as well increased webhosting space, for the same subscription fee that I paid last time!

They were Malaysians running their servers from Europe, which meant that I could only pay them via PayPal or credit card, and I was lucky enough to have Chapree to help me make the payments. I was thinking that I didn’t want to trouble Chap anymore and move to a locally hosted server where I can easily pay through BCB [now CIMB] or Maybank.

However, a gut feeling made me decide otherwise. I’ve hosted with Blogasian for over two years already, and I thought that I might lose the friendly tech support and the bad feeling that I’m pulling out my support for Malaysian entrepreneurs abroad. I decided, hey, if these Malaysians are going to start up, I think they deserve more support from fellow Malaysians, and so I scrapped the idea of changing hosts.

One fine day, no more than two weeks ago, I received an email that started with this sentence…

I was like, Whoa,…WHAT!? I would be receiving free hosting as long as Blogasian is in business, and all I have to do to get it was to put six text links on my sidebar or footer. No text ads, no graphic ads, let alone big, distracting, bulky Flash ads. As you can see, I have put the six links in a non-intrusive manner on my footer, and that’s all.

Many many months before this when friends who have thought of subscribing to a webhost, I would point them to Blogasian. They think that my blog loads pretty slow, and that the payment method is fussy and they got turned off by it. Guess what, guys? You just lost out, hahaha!

I told you guys once before, and I’ll say it again, Blogasian rocks! It’s a shame that you guys didn’t want to believe me then, hahaha!

To those who have been pestering me about putting up ads, try to keep up with those ads, then. Maybe you’ll get a few bucks for your next teh tarik session >:D

---

Small Talk:
Chap is a true-to-God gamer who is trying to make money from his blog to get himself an Xbox 360 – or was it a Playstation 3? Go over there, say hi and click his ads!

---