Tuesday, September 09, 2008

International Trafficking and My 15 Minutes of Fame

A special welcome to my Asian "Blog Explosion" readers! Please read this and make a comment. You'll see why in a minute.

The power of the internet still amazes me. Internet marketing has completely changed since I first ventured into this world in 1997.

You can have a conversation with someone on the phone and by secretly googling your subject matter can sound like an expert on a topic you had barely heard of moments before.

Now there are millions of websites about internet marketing, rather than only a few thousand.

"Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" is now called "Yahoo!"

Information products deliverable online eliminate the expense - not to mention customs hassles - of shipping products.

You can have develop a huge organization in a company and never have met a single one of them. For that matter, you may know people on the internet better than you know your own neighbors.

Your little homeschool (or other niche topic) blog can have a worldwide audience.


I expect to have a fair amount of international traffic because of my listing at Blog Explosion. Blog Explosion is a directory, pinging service and traffic exchange from which you can earn traffic to your blog by viewing other blogs. I have found a number of very interesting blogs from around the world that I would likely never have seen if not for my Blog Explosion membership, many of them from Asian countries.

I was checking my stats today and saw that someone searched on "Network of Five Elements" on the Google engine in Korea, and up popped my blog - then they translated it using Google's instant translation into Korean. The text (except for "Critelli", "networkers", and "homeschool") is entirely in Korean.

I hope my topic was not lost in the translation. I have no idea if this translation is accurate. Perhaps instant translation software has dramatically improved since the early days of Alta Vista and Babelfish. I am fairly sure my article about internet marketing was NOT what this person was really looking for.

But it was strange to see my picture and my blog in another language. It reminded me that both homeschooling and network marketing have their own unique vocabularies, and to be careful to describe things in terms that can be easily translated.

Though it would not be a stretch to say that my Asian readers are more proficient in English than some of the Americans I have encountered online.

I would be very interested in comments here from my Blog Explosion audience, particularly anyone who can tell me if what this article says in Korean bears any resemblance to the meaning of my original article. Blogger has an easy translation widget that I would consider enabling if I had any confidence that my article would not be lost in the translation.

Readers, help me out here?

4 comments:

  1. Well I'd like to help but unfortunately I can't read korean. I've been a blog explosion regular since eh.. 2005! And yeah they have brought an increase in audience. I even topped an average of 80 visitors a day once. But here's a tip.. to maintain audience (and friends) always visit them and comment back. And always visit your links. That's even better than just one time visitors.

    so welcome at BE and i should warn you.. it could be addictive! lol..

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  2. Wanted to take you up on your offer to advertise with me...

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  3. i susan.. and thanks for droppin by my 2nd blog. yes i made the template and the photos on the header, I took myself. as for the base codes, i mixed a few from blogskins free templates and designed the rest. if you need any assistance id be happy to help.

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  4. I'm here via Blog Explosion myself, but I'm from Florida & not fluent in any Asian languages.

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