Apex Kart Racing at Lake Perris.

This past Sunday my friends and I made the trip out to Apex Kart Racing next to Lake Perris, about an hour away from Irvine. My good friend, partner in crime, and fellow racing addict had planned the event for weeks with the owner of the facility, Dave DiMond, who’s a great guy by the way. Guest stars included my other partner in crime, Brandon and former partner in crime, Fujita, as well as racing comrades Dusty Nabor and friend from NNI Racing.

It was a jolly good time despite the cold weather. We all struggled to get the karts to grip and brake and to be honest, not all the karts were well maintained. That didn’t stop us from having a great time though, making sure we all brought out our best game and forced us to adapt quickly to each very different kart (no two karts ever drove the same). Jon was pretty clever, passing up on seat time and other karts once he’d found one that drove the way he wanted.

That strategy really paid off for him once we got to the actual race at the end of the day. What’s interesting to know about karting at Apex is that anytime you drop a wheel, it’s going to cost you $25. Something to do with getting dirt everywhere and requiring extra maintenance; it gets even more expensive when you break something, like an axle. With that in mind, Dusty spun the first lap with the unbelievably cold tires and Jon plowed straight into him.

I was right behind and saw the whole thing; I swear I saw metal flying. We bent an axle in the first lap: pro racing here we come. If I wasn’t too busy thinking about dollar bill signs and was a little more gung ho about keeping pace, I probably would’ve smashed into them myself. Well anyway, we kept racing, more of our guys went off, the dollar bills kept adding up. Towards the end, I think we all agreed that Randy is king of karting.

The guy is a monster on a kart, just like in road racing. I like how he’ll take a terrible kart and make it look amazing. At the sweeper next to the pits, he’ll throw the front right wheel onto the curb to initiate the turn and kick the rear end out, and then throttle through with a hint of counter steer. We were all thoroughly amazed, it wasn’t a surprise we all got destroyed in the actual race. I think with handicap added he still was a full second or two faster than Jon, with Dusty coming into third place.

I don’t know how much we would’ve ended up paying with all the guys going off track, but Dave being the all around super guy that he is made us a deal: $10 a person with our 11 people and we’d be square, just to cover the broken axle. He’d overlook all the other stuff and cover half of the cost for the axle out of pocket. With that said, even though the karts weren’t all that well maintained, you still have a lot of fun and you won’t break the bank if you run out of talent.

I really wish I had a photo of Ferdie in the Captain America race suit he wore; maybe someone happened to snap a photo. Originally the suit was intended for me; the birthday always gets you in trouble. Fortunately I’m such a klutz, I didn’t notice the belt like tie in the middle and thought I was too fat for the suit. My ignorance dodged me a bullet, yayer! Ferdie’s a little sharper and it led to his demise, queue the sad music. Note: Ferdie was awfully eager to put the thing on for some reason.

Well anyway, I’m walking back to the parking and Brandon is standing next to the EVO with a funny look on his face. I was really puzzled, but I definitely knew something was up, something, I just didn’t know what. Before I could even realize my spider sense tingling, Jon and Randy jump out from the side of Brandon’s Range Rover and I’m getting sprayed with champagne, just like in real racing (a dream come true).

In my fantasies, I always pictured myself doing more drinking than spraying, but this will do. What little is leftover in Randy’s bottle, I chug and it’s pretty much given that Ferdie is driving me to lunch. I wondered what it might be like to get pulled over drenched in champagne, quickly ending those thoughts with a flash back to last year. While I’m certain I’d pass a sobriety test, I’d rather not. Our lunch takes us to Mission Inn Hotel, a decent buffet with endless champagne and orange juice.

The food was fine, the champagne was better because I had maybe 8 glasses in the span of an hour or less. I don’t really think anybody else was drinking, I can’t remember. As far as I was concerned, it was an all you can drink fiesta starring me, myself and I. Ferdie drove home with Amy passed out in the back, and me chatting away to keep Ferdie awake. By the time we got to Anaheim Hills, Ferdie was falling asleep and I had to flush my fluids.

I could actually see the black in Ferdie’s eyes getting smaller and smaller. Amy woke up at the gas station and drove us home. I have to admit, I was really sleepy by the time we got back; I went straight for my new bed and passed out for a few hours. When I woke up, we got our gym on to burn all those fresh calories. I guess that concludes my epic birthday celebration adventure, thanks for coming everyone and I hope we can outdo ourselves next year.

Thanks to Ferdie for taking the time to organize the activities and fronting the money to ensure that we were all properly accommodated. Making it happen for 11 people is no joke, and I’m lucky to have great friends to live my life with. Also thank you everyone for chipping in and paying for my karting fees, despite the times. Words are not enough. To everyone who couldn’t make it or wasn’t invited, blame Ferdie; I’m innocent!

The Google Bot tells you what to do.

After a couple years of my domain sitting around, I finally decided to do something with it over the summer! It was sitting at PR2 for the longest time without any real content (Flash sucks) and figured I’d try to see how long it would take me to get to PR4 or higher. Oddly enough, it didn’t take too long to get to PR3, but I know PR4 will be much more difficult.

In other news, my Team SCS website jumped to PR2 in only a month and I think by the end of next year we should be sitting comfortably at PR4. It’s all about those backlinks and with the combined efforts of Ferdie and myself, I don’t think it’ll be a problem. I just installed a new e-commerce application that is significantly more powerful than what we were using before. Shopp blows, don’t ever use it.

I’m expecting to see a huge increase in conversion while at the same time spending less money on PPC. I’ve managed to cut costs in half while maintaining if not increasing CTR and conversion. More money, more money, yayer! On a side note: I’m really disappointed with Google Checkout and their retarded 3 second rule.

Basically Google Checkout requires your store to perform its shipping and tax calculations within 3 seconds, otherwise you get a server timeout error, and guess what, your customers get FREE shipping. Yes, that’s right, it completely ignores all your fancy shipping modules and puts a big fat 0 in shipping. Wow, I hate you guys.

I’m on a lightning fast server but guess what, I’m using UPS and USPS to calculate shipping based on weight, and those guys have to do that for I don’t know how many people. So how likely is it that they’re going to perform the computations in 3 seconds? I’m sure you more or less know the answer to that! Fortunately most shoppers also hate Google Checkout and prefer onsite checkout.

Still, I have a theory that Google gives a little juice to merchants who use their services. There’s no real data to confirm, but seeing as how it’s Google, they’re kings of shenanigans. I don’t even want to get into how much I love, and by love I mean hate, Google Base. The problem is while it makes life for guys like me very hard, on the business side, it’s an amazing tool.

I don’t have enough data yet to say how effective it is with numbers to back me; I just have this feeling that I’ll be ripping my competitors a new one come the next few weeks and jingling all the way when my PayPal transfers to our bank account, yayer! I got a couple other tricks in the works that I’ve been putting together over the break.

In other news, check out my buddy Steve Tu’s new blog, the one and only Steve Tu. Here’s a tip for you new bloggers: it’s all about the links! Alright, that’s all for my updates right now. I got some big news coming in a few weeks: think underpowered, rear wheel drive!

Repeat business is the best kind.

Visionary Composites is a carbon and fiberglass manufacturer in the automotive and motorcycle industry with dealings strictly in high volume B2B. I designed the website for their B2C brand, Crown Moto USA. It’s a small website utilizing a content management system powered by WordPress, making updates quick and effortless. I’m always pleased when my clients come back to me for my web design and web related services in their other ventures. It lets me know I’m doing something right, thanks guys!

My favorite Subaru tuning shop in the greater Los Angeles area.

If you read my blog regularly or own a Subaru, you probably recognize the name YimiSport. They’re a leading Subaru performance tuning shop based in Santa Clarita, capable of handling all your install and dyno tuning needs. The owner Paul Yim and lead tuner Paul Leung are good friends of mine; I’m honored that I’ve been asked to tackle their web design needs with a fresh look and e-commerce solution. I’ll also be search engine optimizing their website to increase traffic and conversions. The project will be added to my work with a complete overview as soon as it’s completed.

A few months back, YimiSport did a motor swap on my 2008 Subaru WRX STi when my headgasket was lifting. They threw in a Cosworth Short Block Assembly, ACT Street Performance Clutch Kit, Cosworth Intake Manifold, and some other go fast goodies. My Subie’s running strong with safe, reliable power; not much more you can ask for!

Team SCS is actually one of my own projects that I put together, with the help of a couple buddies I’ve been racing religiously with for the last 10 months or so. Basically we’re a bunch of road racing junkies with limited budgets on a mission to somehow subsidize our adventures with someone else’s money.

Well, that was the plan anyway, at first. And then the online marketer part of my brain kicked into full boost and all these affiliate ideas started buzzing around my hairless head. Next thing you know, we’re not only selling racing parts; we’re an authorized seller for the DC Shoes Auto Collection.

You think that’s hot right? We already got another deal in the works with Mothers Polishes, Waxes and Cleaners. We’ll be selling their product from our online store and I’ll be doing a number of how to clean your ride tutorials to demonstrate how well the products we sell actually work.

I think the key to selling online is proving your product; once you do that, it sells itself. Alright, so we’ve got e-commerce down, that’s one tried and true revenue model that’s definitely going to bring in some funds. Affiliate marketing is up next, although I’m not going to show all our cards just yet.

Beautiful Cora, photo taken by friend and client: David Mecey.

You may have seen Cora Skinner in such shows as Jay Leno, The Hills, Las Vegas, Entourage, CSI Miami, The Office, and in several commercials and music videos. Cora’s also been featured in Maxim Magazine, Muscle and Fitness Magazine, The Palms billboards and print ads, Guess and Marciano Catalogs, Dreamgirl Lingerie Catalog, Import Tuner and FHM. She’s hot stuff and everybody knows it. I’m pleased to announce that Cora has chosen Mediapainter to design and develop her new website and content management system. I’ll also be implementing analytics with goal conversion tracking to improve lead generation in addition to search engine optimizing her website. You can also look forward to her new blog we’ll be launching to generate social media traffic. Stay tuned!

Mediapainter was officially launched in the summer of 2006, only a few months after I’d graduated from University of California, Irvine. I’d just finished a week-long trip to Whistler, BC, Canada for epic snowboarding with the Camp of Champions, followed up by a month of surfing almost every day. I figured if I was to continue to enjoy even a shred of semblance to the lifestyle I was currently enjoying, I ought to get moving and figure out how to earn a respectable income.

For years I never even bothered having a website of my own; I’d just show potential clients the websites I’d done in the past, and that usually was good enough to get the ball rolling. Feeling like I needed to do something bigger, I did everything and anything that was trendy and all the rage. Naturally that means I started blogging, and my website was animated in Flash, regrettably. Don’t get me wrong, Flash has its time and place, but if you’ve ever visited a Flash website more than once or twice, it gets old fast.

After a while I got sick of looking at my own portfolio website. That happens to me a lot though; I always want something more, something better. It’s that obsessive compulsive side of my personality that drives me wild but at the same time evolves my skill set because I have no choice. My biggest pet peeve was that my search engine traffic was garbage; I wasn’t ranking for any keywords really, and that’s a result of developing an entire website completely in Flash which search engines cannot index.

Just launched www.team-scs.com, check it out!

I’m always going on about how blogs require a serious commitment and should be updated frequently, everyday if possible. Well, I didn’t update my blog for a month, oops! I have a couple good excuses though, which I’m sure you’ll find reasonable. First, I had to work on a lot of client websites, which as you know, is what puts the gas in my race, I mean, the food on my table.

Secondly, I was building a website for my racing team, inspired by Project D (just kidding). If you’re interested in checking it out, the website is www.team-scs.com. Ferdie Ang and I have been working very hard to get all the ducks in order for the team in regards to generating revenue and putting together a racing budget. Let’s face it, racing on your own money gives you control, but racing on someone else’s money is just better!

Well, actually it’s not quite that simple. The biggest focus for me was figuring out how to turn it into a business as opposed to just a hobby, rather an entity that could generate income independently. With that in mind, I tossed around a couple ideas including but not limited to: e-commerce, affiliate marketing, lead generation, advertisement, etc.

I don’t want to give away all our secrets, so we’ll leave it at that! But so far we’re doing rather well; Team SCS is now an authorized seller of DC Shoes Autoworks Collection apparel and accessories, which includes the Subaru Rally Team USA, Limited Edition Gymkhana Project, Block Teamworks, and Pastrana Teamworks. Not bad for the first month out right?

Our e-commerce store is also loaded with a ton of racing parts that the team actually has tried and tested in high performance driving events all over California. We know what works and what doesn’t; it’s a great opportunity for us to demonstrate our authority on the subject of our cars and modifications. Again, I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet.

In terms of the Mediapainter website, I’ve moved a few things around, and I’m going to run a couple PPC campaigns this coming month for some testing. I’ll be updating my archive of work very soon with the new projects I’ve been engaged with over the last month or two. Please check back soon!

Curious, I decided to have a stab at it myself, at the very small but possible chance of Google smiting me. I started with the Best of the Web Directory (at the time, BOTW was at a PageRank 7 but has since fallen to a PageRank 6), which offered either an annual recurring charge of $100, or a one-time only charge of $300. I personally like to jump in head first when I do on the rare occasion, take risks, and so I went for it with the one-time only for $300. What I can’t believe is that you don’t have any guarantee that your site will even be added to the directory, despite the very expensive cost. People have no problems buying into it though, and it’s amazing how many websites are in the directory; imagine all that money being made! Well, I’m $300 poorer than I was before, and all I’ve got to show for it is one link, which isn’t even on the homepage by the way. You see it’s only the homepage that actually has a PageRank 6, which is important to know.

Not feeling satisfied, I thought I’d give it a little extra push by buying a few more premium links in paid directory listings, which also included 100 submissions to free directories. The rate was $160, which is a lot less; however the PageRank of these websites is a bit lower, mostly averaging PageRank 3 or 4. Now I’ve spent $460, supposedly have 106 incoming links, and I’m hoping that my money is going to either bring me traffic, boost my PageRank, or both. Now remember, these things don’t happen overnight. It takes time for Google to make an update, determine how your website has changed and where it should fall. I don’t really know what kind of a time frame we’re looking at, and honestly I don’t think anybody but Google knows. To be safe, I thought I’d give it a solid 2 months from the day of buying the links to start looking around. Based on the data from my analytics, none of these directories that are supposedly linking back to me are directing any traffic, maybe 5-10 unique visitors in one month.

Naturally none of the very little traffic is proving any sort of conversion, and my PageRank hasn’t shown any movement. Granted, if my PageRank did show an improvement in the last 2 months, it could’ve been due to other factors, but it just so happens I was really busy in that time period working on client websites, leaving me unable to further push my website. In consideration, I can confidently say that if you were to buy almost $500 worth of links, you too would be suckered with no results. Link buying and in my opinion directory submitting is dead. If you want a real back linking strategy, build great content for your site and don’t look back. Save your money for something useful like a great copywriter or maybe an even better web designer, like myself! Har har.

These Rays wheels are cursed.

At long last, we’ve reached the final installment of the Willow Springs trilogy. To be honest, part of the day was kind of a sore subject for me and I was reluctant to talk about it, hence the delay. Before I even got to the track, I had a bolt that holds my brake bracket back out on me, on the freeway, at 80 miles per hour. Actually I didn’t even know that part of my very nice, brand new, shiny, expensive, 6-piston brake caliper was partly dragging on the inside barrel of my wheel, until it was already too late.

FML. I cried inside, a little.

I saw a shiny piece of metal go flying out on the freeway too but didn’t connect the dots. I thought I’d just run over something and my tire might’ve kicked it out into the air. Little did I know, sad face. Honestly, I thought I was going driving home that day in the EVO to pick up the spare bolt in my living room, just to get the STi home. Vince was nice enough to get my car in the air for me, pull off the wheel, and evaluate the damage. Out of the lot of us, I’d vote Vince as best mechanic; he’s so clever and he’s quick at wrenching.

Ferdie's war chest.

As it turns out, there was hope, a ray of light from above! I’d thought the bolts in the caliper were the ones I’d lost, but we’d discovered I was only missing one bolt that goes on the bottom of the bracket. Here’s where it gets good; the bolt I need is actually kind of common. I didn’t know Ferdie carries a little pot of Subaru gold with him to the track; all these little miscellaneous spare bolts, nuts, washers, screws, you name it. Random crap, and I do mean crap.

Our little camp.

We found the bolt I needed, somehow. There was only one from what I could tell; that’s just how lucky/unlucky I was that day. Lucky in the sense that we’re going to fix this sucker, unlucky in the sense that we have to fix it to begin with. That’s racing for you! I actually ended up pulling off the other 3 wheels to check each bracket, now that I had very good reason to be suspicious. What the hell, all the other 3 corners were fine! FML.

Another angle of our base.

Well, we got my car up and running and it was a great day after that, for me anyway. Ferdie’s car had an issue with his control arm the day before so he was out for the count. Jon lifted his headgasket and had coolant pushing out of the overflow tank like it was Christmas. Looks like he’s going to have to pull the heads, get a new headgasket, ARP head studs, deck the heads, you know the drill. He’s smarter than I though; his solution will not involve a new engine.

Vince's car sitting at turn 2.

That’s not all! Ferdie lent his GPS data acquisition device to a fellow Subaru road racer, Cassie. This is maybe the second or third time we’ve seen her at a Speedtrial event, driving Gushi’s GC Impreza with a WRX swap. It’s a full on rally car, weighing in at only 2500 pounds packing over 300 to the wheels. Ferdie got a ride with her and says she has insane car control, demonstrated by drifting every corner. I’m very interested to get a ride with her if I see her again. Drifting is not really something any of us do, so I’d love to see that, not to mention get a ride in a 2500 pound car.

With our luck and all, the magnet that holds the GPS whatever you call it flew off in turn 2. After the event, Ferdie, Vince and I hopped into Vince’s car and walked turn 1 and 2 looking for the device. It was nowhere to be found, but we ended up walking turn 3, 5, 8 and 9. Perhaps not really walking, more like getting out of the car, looking at the road surface and surrounding area, then driving off. It was a good way to end a day that started horribly, I think.