When I was contemplating starting an online business two years ago, I consulted my good friend about it. I had to source for my products overseas and at that time, the currency exchange rate was not favorable so I was a little worried.

My friend told me that if I want to start a business, I should not worry about something like that because it is out of our control. What I should do it to write a solid business plan and move according to that.

Another friend of mine who is also in business, asked me, “What are your business plans?”, “Where do you see yourself and your business next year or five years down the line?” I had a good talking to from him when I told him that it’s all “in my head”. He told me that I should have a business plan written down and not keep them in my head, as thoughts only.

I guess I am very fortunate to have friends like these to guide me in my initial steps into the business world. However, if I could start all over again, I would prefer to learn how to write a business plan professionally.

Did you know that Trump University is offering a free course on business plan writing? I think this is an excellent opportunity for us to learn from the Master himself in crafting out a business plan that we should abide by to create success of our business. If you think that small businesses like mine do not need a plan then you are wrong. Size does not matter in this case because business is business and all businesses come with risks, hence the need for a plan!

By learning how to write a solid business plan through Trump University, we will be learning from the best and this is not going to be some “theory” only but applicable in the real world.

I think that even though I have been in business for two years already, it is not too late for me to rewrite my business plan. I hope they will accept non-Americans. I could certainly do with some professional guidance!

I know it was announced yesterday on the official Gmail blog that it now supports IMAP and they will be rolling it out in stages. This morning, I already see it in the Settings of my Gmail. YaY, I may hate Google at the moment for pulling the carpet under my feet but I have been waiting for IMAP support for so many months now.

I don’t know what Nokia has bee thinking for the option to retrieving email every thirty minutes at the fastest. Cat also sleep lah!

Now with Gmail’s IMAP support, I believe that we have the option to retrieve our email every five minutes. I would like INSTANT retrieval but five minutes is a huge improvement from thirty minutes. No doubt about it!

But then five minutes is still not as great as the two minute delay of Consilient’s Push. Here’s looking forward to an instant email retrieval sometime in the near future.

Now, let me go and change the email settings of my mobile device!

I wrote recently that my friends are encouraging me to start an online business because I am wasting spending way too much time on the internet and might as well earn some pocket money. I also have thought about it but could not find something that I would like to sell.

This morning, I was told of an online business by selling phone cards. I read through the business model briefly and I think that anyone who can operate the computer and navigate the internet slightly would be able to join the phone card affiliate program.

Set up fee is only $74.95 while monthly fee is $9.95. Our preferred domain name will be registered on our behalf and a website will be set up for us. We do not need any computer technical or HTML knowledge but to make a success out of this, we need hard work and business acumen. For every card that we sell, we will have the opportunity to be earn commission up to 42%.

Do you think I can do this? I think that now I am blogging less, I may as well do something with my online time!

Is there any blogger who blogs and do not care about whether there are people reading their blogs? I admit that I was one such person. And in fact, I still have this part of me that wants to express my thoughts without anyone knowing about me hence my new blog that is not linked to or linked from anywhere.

However, for the other more established blogs, I do want more website traffic because no matter how well one could put thoughts into writing, if it is not read or shared, it will be deemed not good enough. Based on this perception by others, I have been rather obsessed with my traffic and will check my statistics log every chance I have.

Also, I try various ways to get more website traffic like blog hopping and commenting on these blogs and joining social networking sites to expand my readership. However, I am sure you know that my efforts are all amateurish.

On the other hand, if you do have a site which is traffic dependent like a ecommerce site and hope for more browsers coming through from a better search engine placement, then you would need the help of a professional website optimization firm to tweak your site so that you will receive a new stream of traffic from organic search and hopefully, turn them from curious web browsers to your buyers.

I was talking to my friend about getting my Page Ranks dropped two days ago. I keep hoping it’s just a nightmare that I will wake up from. In fact, I DID have a nightmare about my Page Rank dropping a little while back. Anyway, my friend asked me what about the other bloggers? I said most of the sites were down by one or two ranks but I also know of bloggers who were down by FIVE or went unranked over night. A lucky few had their ranks intact. Oh, how I envy them!

However, does knowing that I am not alone make me feel any better? The fact of the matter is that no matter if I am alone or in the same boat as others, I will once again be locked out BIG time out of many opportunities.

And that makes me depressed