There are many hosts out there that come and go within months. SharkSpace obviously ain’t part of that category of hosts and they don’t show any signs of entering such a situation any time soon. So far I haven’t faced much if not any problems at all. Uptime has been perfect, site loading times fast and server load maintained at a near perfect rate. Prices of the plans remained competitive and for such stability the price is totally worth it.

There was a period of time when uptime of my site lingered between 98% to 100% for around a week or so, not sure why but it didn’t really bothered me much since the impact was minimal and I doubt I suffered much lost or any implications during that period. After that particular week everything has been perfect so far.

For the mere pricing of $5 USD a month, SharkSpace not only provide excellent plans but also marvelous support and service. For those looking for a hosting solution, you might want to take a look at SharkSpace.

I search long and hard, looking for a host that is affordable and reliable. No point paying a dollar a month and then the server shuts down after a month. Reading forums and other people’s reviews, I decided to give SharkSpace webhosting a try. SharkSpace started in the year 2004, so I guess they do have some experience in this field. Their pricing is fantastically reasonable as well. To add on, they have an ongoing 50% off life discount that is currently available for certain plans. I’ll review the host based on first impression, my experience so far with their support and of course whether the server is performing for the price or the promises they made.

If you visit their site, you will be greeted with a pleasant web design. The colours are good and their mascot is cute. It is an animal (a shark) therefore it gets bonus points (since I like polar bears and they are animal as well).  Why is a web design important for a web hosting company? Firstly, it is the first impression it gives people. If you’re greeted with a design that is merely text and nothing else, would you even want to try the host out? First impression means a lot in business and for everyone. A good first impression in this case would convince a buyer to try out the service. A bad impression would simply put him off even with the numerous good reviews by people. SharkSpace has no problem in this department and the first impression they give me is fantastic.

Hosting plans are neatly presented, information on the webhost are detailed and sufficient. Everything was great in terms of design and presentation. With that said, I had to use the live support for some queries regarding the host and other payment issues. The live support might be a problem for some, especially those living in the time zone totally opposite to that of their main headquarters. This is simply because they only operate during usual office hours (8 am to 5 pm Central Time and is closed on Sunday) This meant that it is opened from around 11 pm to 7 am for me, Singapore. Therefore it was hard to communicate with their sales support at the start and I didn’t really feel like submitting a ticket for the trivial matters I had in mind so I just waited during one of the fridays to ask.

Their live support is fantastic. As in I didn’t have any major issues so far so whatever I’ve asked are simple questions but they are adequately answered and I’m always left satisfied when I close the window. Staff are polite and helpful, and I must definitely say patient for I asked several questions over and over again because I was rather cautious and worried for it is my first time shifting host and stuff. I did try their ticket support for some issue regarding the host background and stuff and they replied within 20 mins? (They say ticket would be replied within an hour and their current average support time is 10 mins) Something to take note was that the ticket sent was flagged (by myself) as low priority and still it got answered really quickly. Hmm, that is something really really good. Oh and their ticket support (technical department) is opened 24/7, meaning they will help you within an hour or much much less.

With that said I finally purchased a plan and started moving my stuff from my previous webhost over. The account creation was instant as soon as you pay the money. I receive the email regarding my account information within seconds after the payment by credit card was done. Everything went very smoothly. Transferring was fast and the uploading speed etc were great. For my internet connection to upload at around 100kb/s was amazing. cPanel was provided (even though I do not use much of it) and is a bonus for all. Fantastico is fantastic even if I didn’t use it. As in I’m just stating a general statement because cPanel is by far my most preferred control panel.

Uptime up till now is at 100% and of course things looks fantastic. The future is bright and I believe I’ll be back with another review by year end (not end month cause I think I’ll give it more time) and in that review I’ll be positive and happy. I’ll rate the host on their plans and pricing when I feel that I’ve been long enough with the host because some host promises so much yet they give so little or simply close down the next day. SharkSpace doesn’t seem to fit into that category but still I believe time will be an evidence to whatever I’ll be stating in future. For now, I rate the service and the hosting so far a 8.5/10. A 1.0 taken off because of live support not being 24/7 and a 0.5 because nobody is perfect.

Link to Host: SharkSpace Webhosting

The game currently plays for around half an hour or so. Having said that, 30 mins include a second round play through or even a third. The level completes within 10 mins, the estimated time when help arrives. There is only one level. Do the math, and you’ll realise this is one hell of a short game. Reading up on their site, the developers did say something about providing free extra maps later on, but as of now, yes the game finishes within an hour or less. You get to choose from several difficulty levels. Each increases the complexity of the way you go about defending the building. However, even with the difficulty changed, the game still remains the same. The same old enemies, weapons and so on. No rewards except a cool little highscore that you can use to challenge your friends if they actually play the game.

The game allows players to choose from 4 different weapons. They are, the pistol (default and infinite ammo), rifle, rocket launcher and an airborne strike remote controller. Whichever guns you use, you practically have unlimited ammo supply for them. You get to call for a support plane to drop some crates which acts as repair power-up as well as ammo refills. I’ve used all of the guns and felt the best to use was the rifle for it simply meant more people killed in the fastest amount of time. I couldn’t use the rocket launcher nor the airborne strike to the fullest of their abilities for unknown reasons. I just can’t seem to hit anyone even with the explosive power of the rocket launcher. I shoot, boom, I missed. Playing around with the weapons are fun, but the fun last for only a short period of time. After that, you’ll probably just stick to one or simply quit the game.

There are 3 enemy types in the game. One the normal infantry who holds a gun, second the suicide bomber who does nothing but rushes to the building to blow himself up, and lastly a heavy infantry who uses rockets to shoot at you. All are killed in the same way, however with an exception to the suicide bomber who explodes if you shoot his body. You are allowed to kill your opponent by shooting either the body, the head or exploding them. You gain points by chaining up combo kills. The higher the combo, the higher the score. There are chickens present in the game as well, kill them for points and achievement (steam users). That is practically all the game does provide.

With just one map and the cartoony graphics, one cannot help but say this game is way way too short for the price tag it carries. The graphics are fine, but nothing eye catching. Explosions are done the cute way so are the killings and blood. However, the animation of the character movement was rather poor but with the graphics being that way, I guessed I can’t comment too much. With all that said, all I can do is to wait for the new levels should there be any, otherwise, the game is currently being sold for around $6.95 (around $11 SGD?). With that price tag, I believe many gamers will be put off. $11 SGD can get you many iphone games you know, and they last even longer than FL:BoB.

Check out a gameplay footage I made:

Why would Publishers be angry?

Why shouldn’t they be angry when their sites get redirected to some holding scam like page? Publishers’ own visitors themselves might lose trust in the site they go to. This especially applies on new visitors. What about the big sites that publishes Advertlets? Within minutes a few hundreds if not thousands of visitors would have been redirected. I’m happy my site isn’t too established yet if not this mistake made by OTHERS would have cost me my site, my reputation and my viewers’ trust.

Why would Advertisers be angry?

They pay for what they do not deserve. That is why. But I doubt it is much of a problem most probably because Advertlets would extend their advertising period for free or refund them the lost during the period whereby their advertisements are not displayed.

Last Words

Some thoughts I have on the issue. You cannot go far if you make such mistakes especially when you have strong competitors. Such mistakes may seem so small and insignificant but the effects and aftermaths are great, greater than what you think or expect. Small sites will not be affected much but for the more popular and famous sites the damage created is huge and painful. With such an event happening Advertlets may have to build the site a few months again before they can regain trust from the bigger publishers. Well perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill but for me this is a mistake that made me lose all my trust in them. It is just renewing a domain, how difficult can that be? If you can even forget to pay for your own fees, what more about issuing publishers their payout?

Official site visit it for more information on how you can get your free software!

There is also another free software that is almost the same in terms of concept and idea.  Check out the site! Fix8

Right. So now we know the situation let us talk about it. Almost 3 or more advertisements repeats itself. That would mean the advertisers are paying let us say 1000 impressions, but all they get is? 1000 / 4 (easier to calculate) = 250 impressions! In other words, advertisers are actually paying 4 times to price per 1000 impressions. I tried reading through the faqs, terms of conditions etc but nothing touches on this subject. I don’t know but it sure looks to be quick money for publishers but as for advertisers? Ineffective and a waste of money.

Both Advertlets and Nuffnang are companies and places of revenue for webmasters, bloggers, especially in the region of Asia (specifically Malaysia and Singapore). Though they both aim the provide users with an alternative source of income through their website, they both run on different system. It may seem rather unclear on how different Nuffnang and Advertlets are but I hope after reading my article you will have a clearer view on which is “better” for you.

Recently there have been several complaints by bloggers on Nuffnang on why they have not been receiving advertisement offers for several weeks or months. These outbursts of anger also include them being angry on how they realized that they advertised Nuffnang without being paid. Almost all of those that complained switched to Advertlets as they no longer want to wait anymore. However, on the other end bloggers that are currently getting the advertisement offers showed their disagreement and debated back. All these debating sure sound intense but there is only one suggestion to both ends. If you do not receive your advertisement offers, so be it. Nuffnang is not for you. For those who have received offers over and over again, good for you.

Advertlets on the other end have not much problems so far. No complaining except the fact of that little puny sum of money that publishers are earning and the problem of the logging in system. To make up for that, Advertlets hosted several campaigns and offers for bloggers such as reviewing their own website for a chance to earn a sum of money. (25 SGD for the lowest) Great ways of winning the people’s heart and at the same time earn effective money. I have one concern that is a few months back they also offered a sum of money if your review on their site get selected. I participated at that time but the sad truth is, there was no winner at all. They extended the deadlines to November and I was utterly disappointed on that matter. They did not even bother to give a reason as to why. I guess it was most probably because of the lack of participants but that should not be a reason for them not to provide one. This incident might not have affected many as Advertlets is still not known to a lot of people. However, I am one of the unlucky victims who have lost a little trust in Advertlets since that incident. (No one seems to even care about it or perhaps people did not even notice? Or wait; perhaps there was not one except me participating? I doubt so.)

Without further ado, let us go on to the comparison of both companies and then my review on both of them as well as my opinions and thoughts.

Table of Comparison

Detailed Comparison

Focused Publishers

Both Advertlets and Nuffnang are currently still in local scale. Both provide advertisements that caters to only Singaporean and Malaysian readers. They also pay in SGD or RM. However, Advertlets is also seen to be showing international advertisements (but that is highly unrecognizable). In my opinion, Advertlets caters more to Malaysian publishers while for Nuffnang, caters both to Singaporean and Malaysian publishers with equal effort (Nuffnang has both .SG and .MY sites and are operated by different people).

Ability to earn from it?

Of course you can earn from both companies. However, some might find Nuffnang to be more profitable or the other way round. Advertlets definitely will give publishers some earnings. As long as you have a website, you display their advertisements, you get the money. However, for you to be able to earn some money from Advertlets, it requires you to display their advertisements on a high traffic site. You can earn around 0.20 RM per 200 impressions (Uniques? Not too sure there. I myself am confused) and these visitors ought to be countries from Singapore, Malaysia or perhaps South East Asia. I realized that they pay more for impressions coming from those countries mentioned above then countries like USA, UK etc. As for Nuffnang, if you have a high traffic site, you might or not earn money at all. Nuffnang in the other hand works differently. They do not display advertisement as soon as you sign up. They work in a business module whereby the advertisers choose which website to display their advertisement on. Thus, you might get no advertisement offers at all! In that case, you will not earn a single cent at all. In my research, I found out that Nuffnang have advertisers that only caters to Singaporean/Malaysian visitors. Thus if your site is found to have a strong traffic of international countries, you may not get any advertisement offers at all. In conclusion, Nuffnang may work for some only (Strong Singapore/Malaysia traffic), while for Advertlets for everyone as long as you have the people coming in.

Amount of revenue publishers can earn

For Adverlets, you can earn cents to a few dollars every day. If you have at least 1000 page views everyday (Page views, not uniques.), you can earn a dollar or two. As for Nuffnang, if you have offers continuously coming in, earning around $20 SGD a month would not be much of a problem. Putting that aside, Advertlets and Nuffnang both host other offers that enable you to earn extra cash. For example for Nuffnang, selected publishers are given specific advertising offers (creating a post to promote a certain product) and can earn extra cash from completing them. As for Advertlets, reviewing their site might get you some money if your review gets selected. All in all, Advertlets will earn you cents no matter what site you have or who you are while for Nuffnang, a highly Singaporean/Malaysian/Asian specific site only.

Ads placed based on?

Advertlets – Your traffic and statistics derived from your polls.

Nuffnang – Your traffic

Relationship with publishers

Advertlets – Average with most publishers if not good with others. So far not many complaints about them except the logging in issue and as for me, them extending the deadline without any reason at all.

Nuffnang- Extremely bad or good. Bad for those who have not received advertisements for months after joining, and good for those who received advertisements. (Duh.) Well, I would say the majority of the members do not have a good relationship with the company. Seriously. (only the minority and those are the hardcore nuffnangers and those that received offers after offers love Nuffnang)

Activeness

Both companies have hosted programs and outings to show their care and concern for the publishers. However, Advertlets is seen to be only active with Malaysian publishers as most outings that are organized so far are held in Malaysia. Nuffnang on the other hand holds outings in Singapore and Malaysia. (Both branches work differently anyways. Different management and staff) However, participants on those outings are usually the ones who received advertisement offers. Perhaps they only reach out to the ones that love them? And not bother about those who hate them? I do not know.

Reliability

Both are reliable. Cheques have been sent and publishers have received them. None are scammers at all.

The Verdict

If you are an international reader, meaning you are not from Singapore or Malaysia, none of these companies can work out for you. I would suggest that you join Google’s Adsense, Adbrite, Widgetbucks etc. Now if here is a mind map as to what you should take (in my opinion of course.)

If you do not understand the mind map or cannot view the mind map, here is the text version:

1. Where are you from?

(a) Singapore (proceed to (2))

(b) Malaysia (proceed to (2))

(c) Others (UK, USA etc) (go to answer 3)

2. Is your traffic

(a) High (proceed to (3))

(b) Low/Medium (go to answer 2 and 3)

3. Your traffic consists mainly of…

(a) Singaporean/Malaysia (go to answer 1 and 2)

(b) Others/International Users (go to answer 2 and 3)

Answer 1 – Nuffnang
Answer 2 – Advertlets
Answer 3 – Google’s Adsense, Widgetbucks, Adbrite etc

Analysis

Why did I come out with such answers? How did I derive such opinions? Well, let us see:

Nuffnang – Advertisers are all from local regions (meaning Singapore and Malaysia). Since advertisers are to choose which site they want to display their advertisement, they would obviously choose sites with high traffic from countries their companies are located at (in this case, Singapore and Malaysia). Since they are all local advertisers, international users are most probably not going to get any advertising offers at all. Going on to the traffic, it seems to be that Nuffnang promotes sites to the advertisers. If you get more traffic, Nuffnang promotes you more. In that case, you most probably will get the offer. However, if you have a puny stream of visitors to your site per day, you will most likely be unrecognized nor be informed to the advertisers. Thus not getting any offers at all.

Advertlets – Advertisers are also from mainly the local regions. However, since Advertlets work on a PPM (pay per impression) system, every member will get advertisements displayed on their site. And every impression made (visitor etc) will result in some money being earned. Thus, as long as you have a high traffic flow, Advertlets will earn you money. Of course I noticed that they pay more for local visitors. If you have a low to medium traffic flow, the money will still be earned except that it will be much lesser.

Other international advertising solutions – I will not touch on that since my main focus is on Nuffnang and Advertlets.

Conclusion

A really long article but I hope it gives you a wider view on both companies and which you should choose. Any comments? Post it and I will respond to it. I still have much to say but I must be sure that people are actually interested in this topic. And if that is the case, there will be another part coming out to touch on the publisher’s nationality. That is another factor of which site you should choose from.

A side note

I am neither a business expert nor an internet marketer. I am not a full time professional blogger nor a learned entrepreneur. All information listed above is solely based on my opinions. To believe or not to believe in it, it is your own option. People have their own opinions, I am no exception.

Bestmobilesoftwares presents you the best anti-theft Mobile, PDA and Mac Verey I softwares at a very reasonable price, as low as the price of an ‘optical mouse’. The best part is that the software comes with a one-time payment only and with no subscription charges.

A brief diagram on how they work:

If you have the time or is interested, go view that website!

p.s: this is especially for Singaporeans.

http://www.wordhugger.com

“Word Hugger is a Micro Investment website. A micro investment of $60 will earn lots of money back over the ten years that you own your word page for. We offer a 100% money back guarantee, and provide phenomenal support along the way.” ~ About Us – WordHugger
Can you comprehend that? No? Alright I shall try to paraphrase it for you so as to enable you to be able to further understand what WordHugger is all about. If you know about the milliondollarwiki, WordHugger is something similar to that but instead of buying a page, you buy a word! On buying a word you get something like wordhugger.com/your-word-here and you can edit it to your liking etc. Get it now?
Here is the catch. When you buy a word for 60 bucks, some of it, to be exact 50% of the profit earned, will be given to Kiva. Now, what is Kiva?
“Kiva is a non profit organization which loans money to entrepreneurs in the developing world. Individuals give Kiva a micro loan of $25 per person they are going to sponsor. Kiva then pools a number of these sponsors together, to collect a sum of $800-1200. Once the funds have been reached, Kiva contacts its micro-finance institutions in different developing countries such as Ghana, Ecuador, Cambodia, and so on, who then loan it to an entrepreneur in that location.”
Sweet? Definitely. Not only are you helping yourself in your business or whatever by buying a word, you’re also indirectly contributing funds for a good cause!

So now what’s up with me being all kind and sweet putting up such an advertisement on my site. Well, besides me finding the site and concept behind it rather cool and innovative (Yes I meant what I say. I swear that I speak nothing but the truth), they are currently running a contest to promote themselves. In that case, this post is somewhat like a submission for the contest. Ha, call me money-minded or what-so-ever, I don’t care. All I want is to win a few bucks for me to spend after my examinations. If you are interested, you can participate too! Here are the details:

http://blog.wordhugger.com/wordhugger-contests-win-100-free-words-or-maximum-exposure/
Go read it yourself. I’ll just key out the main points:

- You write a post about wordhugger

- You tell the webmaster

- You stand a chance for a $100 dollars

Now for further details, go to that URL I provided. It gives you the guidelines on how your post should be and what it should contain etc. Right, now back to studying if not I’ll be history for history tomorrow. Ha Ha I know it’s cold but I’m really stressed out currently.