Blog | Ryan Lum - Creative Strategist & Designer
365 Photo Project
On 12, Jan 2013 | One Comment | In Bucket Listing | By Ryan Lum
Several years ago I remember seeing people do something called a 365 project. The concept is simple. Everyday for a year, you do something consistent. Some people do paintings and others do poems. One of the most popular ones is called a 365 photography project where you take a photo everyday for a year, sometimes with different themes. Well this year I decided to do this challenge!
7 Key Tips To Branding Success
On 27, Dec 2012 | No Comments | In Work | By Ryan Lum
To me, branding is one of the most, if not the most, important aspect of building a new company or growing your current company.
The Buried Life
On 21, Dec 2012 | 2 Comments | In Bucket Listing | By Ryan Lum
What Do You Want To Do Before You Die? That’s the question. Some may call it your bucket list. These guys called it ‘The Buried Life’. It’s a story about 4 ordinary guys doing extraordinary things. It’s now a TV show on MTV in which the 4 guys attempt to check an item off the list and help a stranger check one off theirs. As soon as I saw the trailer, I was hooked. I’ll tell you why.
Cocaine Shots and Medieval Castles
On 21, May 2012 | No Comments | In Traveling | By Ryan Lum
I decided to take a little detour from my planned route. My couch surfing host, Maija, told me that it would be very easy to take a ferry from Finland to Estonia. After researching that it would be about 48 euro and 2 hours one-way, I decided I had to do it.
Estonia is now one of my favorite locations to visit. It also helped that the day I visited was perfect. Beautiful weather, amazing places to just lay out and friendly people. I ended up staying at Tallinn Backpackers, a hostel that resided in the Old Town area of Tallinn. I then met up with another couch surfer to explore the town. Another awesome thing about Tallinn is the free WiFi that is abundant!
10 Critical Traits of an Entrepreneur
On 05, May 2012 | No Comments | In Career Development | By Ryan Lum
- Imagination. Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” The fellas over at Google had all the computer skills and knowledge they needed to have successful careers in some firm’s IT department–along with tens of thousands of other techies. What makes Larry Page and Sergey Brin household names is the fact they imagined there was a better way to search the web, and then they created it.
Traveling Solo
On 13, Apr 2012 | No Comments | In Traveling | By Ryan Lum
Traveling solo is both liberating and an experience. Unlike traveling with a friend, you have the complete freedom to do what you want, when you want. The only downsides I can think of is that you don’t have someone to talk to. You can easily meet people along the way, but it seems like it’s the casual conversation and you don’t get the deep connection you would when traveling with a friend. Regardless, you learn a lot about yourself, and I think you’re going to love it.
The Best Travel Creditcard – CHASE Sapphire Preferred
On 15, Feb 2012 | 2 Comments | In Traveling | By Ryan Lum
Prior to my most recent trip, I started looking into a specific credit card that I could use for travel. Before this research, it never even occurred to me to get a travel specific credit card. In past travels, I relied on cash and my debit card. It was only until recently, I’ve uncovered why it is necessary to pick up a specific travel credit card if you plan on doing extended periods of travel or travel frequently.
I stumbled upon a great article by Nomadic Matt on picking a travel credit card, and it inspired me to pick one up myself. It proved to be one of the greatest decisions I’ve made regarding smart traveling. Here are my top 3 reasons why this is the perfect travel credit card.
Stumble Upon vs Reddit vs Digg
On 12, Jan 2012 | No Comments | In Social Media | By Ryan Lum
After running some tests on my blog, I found that they each generate very interesting results in terms of traffic building.
Stumble Upon
If you’re not using it, I suggest you at least try it. I noticed HUGE spikes in my traffic after submitting my articles to stumble. It was almost an instant spike in traffic. A very noticeable spike that gave me several hundred views. The one downside to this is the traffic lasts only a couple minutes. This means you get a HIGH bounce rate because people are stumbling and continuing their journey. It’s good for a quick spike in traffic, but nothing long term. I also noticed that not a lot of people actually engaged in the website. It was meant for social skimming.
The plus side is you can submit articles fairly quickly.
I totally forgot about this news sharing site to be honest. I don’t have a reddit button on my blog. I did submit some articles and noticed that the user ended up staying on the site longer. It’s also a more steady flow of traffic rather than a spike in traffic. With this being said, I highly recommend submitting to this site because it does generate traffic to your site and looks to have a lower bounce rate.
The downside is that you sometimes have to wait 8 minutes between submitting new articles and it seems more limited.
Digg
I haven’t seen much traffic come from this site and I’m not quite sure why. I also noticed that the topics you can submit to are very limited. Perhaps the content gets diluted so it doesn’t get shared.
With this brief summary, I can say I saw a huge spike in traffic on my blog and it blew my analytics. It shows that 99% are new visitors. So with that being said, I suggest you try using these sites to help boost your website traffic even just a little.
A Whole Year of Bucket Listing
On 30, Dec 2011 | No Comments | In Bucket Listing | By Ryan Lum
I can’t believe it is almost 2012. Of course with the new year, comes reflection and goal setting. I’m so grateful to have met so many inspirational people in my life and have accomplished so much that I’ve always wanted to do. I can’t wait for 2012!
